We were in contact with all of our posterity and were able to play individually with eight of our eleven grandchildren but the others were certainly in our thoughts and in our hearts.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
July Family Week 2012
We were in contact with all of our posterity and were able to play individually with eight of our eleven grandchildren but the others were certainly in our thoughts and in our hearts.
Friday, July 20, 2012
Ireland Potato Famine Immigrants' Contributions
Some of the fascinating things about working in the Training Zone are the missionaries we meet and the stories of their ancestors that we learn. The past two weeks both John and I have worked with young elders. They have amazing skills. My student was Elder Stone and together we learned much about the Irish people who immigrated to America because of the potato famine which decreased the population of Ireland by half in the 1840’s.
Elder William Neil Stone entered the Church and Family History Mission on July 6, 2012, as a young elder. He suffered a traumatic brain injury in an automobile accident three years before and had been in therapy off and on since that time. He was finally ready to serve a mission. He knew he had extensive Mormon pioneer ancestry through three of the four sets of his great-grandparents. He was a direct descendent of Pres. Brigham Young and was also distantly related to Pres. Spencer Woolley Kimball. However, there was no information beyond his paternal great-grandparents, Frank James Stone and Marie Moshier. We began by searching FamilySearch.org and other internet search engines to learn as much as possible.
On the 1900 Census for Colorado we discovered Marie’s parents, William and Kate Moshier, an older brother and Marie’s twin sister Mary—all of who were from Ireland. It is very unusual for a person to appear in two census records for the same year but Marie Moshier was found twice in the both the 1910 and 1920 census. By then the family had moved to Utah and additional siblings were found. In 1910 Marie was listed as a student in the Utah State School for the Blind and Deaf in Ogden, Utah, and shortly after with her family in Murray, Utah. In the 1920 census she was listed with her family in Salt Lake City and a few days later at the home of her uncle and aunt in Boise, Idaho, along with her twin sister Mary and younger sister Dorothy. This answered the question of the possible location of the marriage of Marie and Frank James Stone in 1921 in Boise, Idaho.
Elder Stone emailed his family and learned that both Marie, her twin sister Mary, and also two younger sisters, Dorothy and Nora, were all born deaf. Nora also had Downs’ Syndrome and died in her 30’s. She was one of the nation’s longest survivors at that time. Frank became deaf after getting Scarlet Fever as a child. Frank graduated in 1913 from Gallaudet University in Washington D.C. , the nation’s deaf university. It seemed unusual that Frank died in Portland, Maine, when family members were living in Portland, Oregon. However, other emails showed that Frank’s daughter and her husband taught at Governor Baxter School for the Deaf in Falmouth, Maine (near Portland). Government documents verified this information.
In reviewing additional census information we found Mary Gorman, Marie Moshier’s grandmother, was listed as living with the family. In checking census records we discovered that Mary Gorman, born 1846 in Ireland, had come to the United States in 1848 or 1849. By 1880 she was a widow in Pueblo, Colorado, with five young children cooking for eight Irish boarders who were working on the railroad. Many family members for whom we had no previous records were found. Friday, July 13, was a blessed day because he found Mary Gorman’s digital Utah Death Certificate listing her actual birth date and place in County Tipperary, Ireland, the name of Mary’s husband, and the full names of both of her parents! Mary was buried in Mount Calvary Catholic Cemetery in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1923. That the daughter who completed the death certificate had so much family history information with all the moving that the family had done was truly amazing.
Eventually Elder Stone was able to prepare the names of many ancestors to receive their temple ordinances. He learned about relatives who were buried in national cemeteries and who received military decorations for their valor. We gained a great appreciation for his Irish heritage and their contributions in America. It was evident that these immigrants who came to the United States to escape the potato famine in Ireland and who built and extended the transcontinental railroad across the country wanted to have their temple work done. The fact that so many records were available and were quickly found in less than two weeks was miraculous.
Because the Salt Lake Temple was closed, the Training Zone went to the Bountiful Temple for Go Forth Day and John drove one of the vans to transport the missionaries. We are getting to know the two new mission counselors, President Eckel and President Session. Friday, July 20, 2012, was President and Sister Wayne S. Peterson’s 50th Wedding Anniversary. They celebrated with a dinner with all of their posterity and pictures that evening in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Eliason Move - Alpine Fire
Grant
Kristilyn with the babies in the stroller in front of their rental home. You can see the garage in the back where they stored many things.
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