Category Archives: Family History

Corrections to Grandma Benac’s Personal History

In Grandma’s acknowledgements page of her personal history book (written and printed in 2001), she says, “Write your own book in rebuttal, but not while I’m still around to read it.”

Well, she has not been around for almost two years now, so it’s time we started mentioning the things we know now that Grandma didn’t know. No disrespect to Grandma intended: I know she’s cheering me on up above as she sits and chats with Margaret and her mother Ann Dunlope about life, family, and the gospel.

As I’ve mentioned before, when Grandma passed away, I felt a strong need to pursue a specific line of family history. Frank and I were successful in finding a few different family lines related to James and Margaret (Shields) Simon (pages 25-28 in Grandma’s book). With my baby being born I’ve not focused on the family for more than a year now, but I’m feeling the spirit of Elijah very strongly again, so expect more of these posts in the next few days and weeks.

Here are some general corrections to the story of James Simon as found in Grandma’s book. More detailed information to come, with links to the records we’ve found.

On page 26, Grandma was unable to find a birth record for Grandpa Simon but knew that he told Greenfield cousins about “when he was a little boy in Dublin.” We do not know for certain when he was born, that is true. However, chances are nearly 100% that he was born and raised in Manchester, England. Certainly not Dublin, since his family came from Galway County, Ireland in 1847.Grandpa Simon was born between 1847 and 1850.

On page 27, Grandma says the family tradition stated that James’ father Thomas died at sea on the way to America, but she states it was not true since they could not find record of it. With closer inspection of the ship manifest, we know it is true. Thomas Simon died of apoplexy literally one day before the ship arrived at Castle Garden, New York City.The manifest transcribes his age as 12 1/2 years old. But it seems clearly a misread of the sloppy writing, which has been crossed out at his death.

As for Grandma’s further thoughts on Maggie and the baby Edwin, we have not yet found them in America or even found any evidence of Edwin’s birth, but we are not finished searching yet. There may be an Edwin somewhere, and Margaret probably did not disappear in to thin air.

There is lots more to learn about Margaret (Shields) Simon another day, for her story is far more complicated than Grandma’s book suggests. Note that on page 26 of Grandma’s book, she says they were married in 1867 and James D was born in 1866…notice any thing about those dates?!

Bottom line is, there was a first marriage, and James Delaney was the son of Denis Delaney. I’m still working on details of this, and we don’t yet know what happened to Denis. More info to come. In 2012, the Catholic Family History Society finished digitizing baptismal and marriage records for St. Wilfrid’s Catholic church, which is the church where Margaret and James were married. I have ordered a copy of that (a CD-ROM; it is not online), because I found evidence that a James Delany was baptized there, with Thomas Simmons as his godfather.

I’m working on a write up about the two families (the Shields and the Simons) for those who may be interested in the sources and so forth. Watch this page for more information! You can also log in to New Family Search and see what Temple work has been done.

Lucky Bookish Treasures

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When Grandma passed away, my mom gave each of her children a special something from Grandma. My item was a book published in 1852, the fourth edition of Young Ladies’ Oasis. This book is a collection of poetry, essays, and stories “appropriate” for young ladies.

Today, I wanted to browse through it, and what did I find but what I’ve been looking for all my life: A lucky 4-leaf clover.

Years ago, Mom told me a story. When she was a young girl, her Aunt Florence was sitting in their backyard when she said, “oh, I’ve found a four-leaf clover!” She was sitting in a patch of them. I have been looking for my own four-leaf clover since I first heard that story.

Apparently, Gram (Josie Lecta Dedman Wilson) took one of the clovers home and pressed it in this book of hers, which we assume she received from her mother (Dora May Allison Dedman).

I love how the clover has left a mark on the page. A shadow of that lucky day.

The clover is pressed between pages 192 and 193, in the midst of an essay called “Pretty Women.” It ponders pretty women throughout “history” (Rachel in the Bible, Helen of Troy, Cleopatra) and wonders why women today (1850s) aren’t using their good looks to their best advantage.

Every lady is at liberty to bring out her own ” good points” as she thinks best, and it is easy to do so, as well as to conceal her weak ones, without departing from the fashions that prevail.

One of the two of these ancestors of mine (probably not my grandma, Helen Wilson Benac, given the ageing), also left a few other treasures.

This looks to me to have been embroidered with hair. But maybe I’m just wishing. It’s probably thread. I’ve always thought the embroidered-with-hair thing to be very cool, but my husband says that it is disgusting. Are you in the disgusting camp or the cool camp?

And then, someone enjoyed an autumn afternoon while reading Young Ladies’ Oasis. I love the dark spots on this leaf. I haven’t read this essay yet.

Young Ladies’ Oasis is, of course, available online by now. Are you going to read it? I am. Not in the fourth edition, though. I’m going to read the ebook. The ten minutes I spent with it today have done far more damage to this family heirloom than I’d like to admit.

Eminent Women Redux

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Remember how last year when I went to Nauvoo I was a model for a painter? He was painting the eminent men and women who appeared to President Woodruff in the St. George Temple. I became incredibly interested in this event, and although I haven’t thought of it every day, the event is something I have recalled a few times in the past months.

This week I was reading the poetry of Anne Bradstreet. I wrote about Anne Bradstreet today on my reading blog. Anne Bradstreet was a Puritan, a dedicated wife, and a free-thinker, as she balanced being a mother to eight with being a pioneer in a 1630s New England settlement and a talented poet in her own right.

“I am obnoxious to each carping tongue
Who says my hand a needle better fits.” (“The Prologue” stanza 5)

Yet, given the fact that she was a woman of faith, a Puritan woman at that, she also has numerous poems about faith. Just like you and me, she struggled to come to peace with her life struggles and her faith in the beyond. Take this sample from a poem she wrote just after her house burned down.

There’s wealth enough; I need no more.
Farewell, my pelf; farewell, my store.
The world no longer let me love;
My hope and Treasure lies above. (“Verses on the Burning of My House”)

Or maybe these thoughts of faith as she suffered from insomnia one night:

By night when others soundly slept
And hath at once both ease and Rest,
My waking eyes were open kept
And so to lie I found it best.

I sought him whom my Soul did Love,
With tears I sought him earnestly.
He bow’d his ear down from Above.
In vain I did not seek or cry.

My hungry Soul he fill’d with Good;
He in his Bottle put my tears,
My smarting wounds washt in his blood,
And banisht thence my Doubts and fears.

What to my Saviour shall I give
Who freely hath done this for me?
I’ll serve him here whilst I shall live
And Loue him to Eternity. (“By Night While Other’s Slept”)

At any rate, as I read her struggles of faith, I felt the same things I felt when I have been doing family history. I felt she was right next to me as I read her poems of faith. I felt that the veil was incredibly thin. And I had a distinct impression that she was one of those eminent women who appeared to Wilford Woodruff.

I looked on all the sites I looked on last time. I could not find Anne Dudley or Anne Bradstreet on any of the lists. So I looked her up in New Family Search. I found that her baptisms were done in September 1879 in the St. George Temple. It was two years and a half after the eminent men and women appeared to Wilford Woodruff. Maybe she was not one of those who appeared on that day in 1877, but somehow her name got put in the system at the same time. (Those were the first baptisms for the dead performed in a temple, as the St. George Temple was the first operating temple.)

Bradstreet’s poems show that she already believed the gospel two hundred years before it was restored. Such good poetry. Read it at Anne Bradstreet.com.

What are you reading for National Poetry Month?

By the way, can you tell which face is based on mine in Bedard’s image? I don’t know for sure, of course, but there’s one that I think looks rather like me. The painting is almost done and so beautiful! See here.

2011 Goal Number 2: Do Family History Work

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I was walking the dirty and crowded back streets of Greater Manchester, England, in the summer of 1885, searching for them. Then I remembered their address, and asked a passerby for directions. I was a strange sight in my modern day clothes, but I hadn’t had time to prepare for my journey: I didn’t know I would be time traveling, after all.

As I approached the small cellar, I saw two men approaching, and I knew it was James (senior) and his brother Martin. James was a bit wary of me, but when I’d explained that I was his descendant, come to visit from 2011, he was willing to answer my questions. I asked him question after question, and I’m sorry to say that I cannot at this time remember what I asked, let alone the answers he gave me! Just one question I remember: why hadn’t he gone yet to New York looking for Margaret? She was his wife, after all!

As I tried to find my way out of the time warp, Margaret Ann and her father were starting to pack their bags. They said it would take a few weeks to get enough cash together, but they were ready to go to New York and find Margaret. They realized they’d waited too long.

The streets got darker as I stumbled along in the maze, and suddenly I was awake, Paul asking me for help with something this worldly.

It was just a dream. Upon waking, I knew immediately that I’d had some of the details wrong. James and his children did not live in the cellar at Back Acton Street: that was the address of Thomas Simmons and his family during the 1851 and 1861 censuses. What was his address in 1881? I should look it up for the next time.

Remember how I claimed that this year I’d make New Year’s Resolutions after I’ve accomplished something? I’ve been meaning to tell you about my resolution number 2, but every time I sit down to write about it, I get distracted on Ancestry.com or some other site. Tonight I’m determined to get it down for your sakes.

Saturday, January 1, 2011, my Grandma, Helen Ruth Wilson Benac, peacefully passed away. I shared some thoughts in January on my reading blog about the power of reading her personal history.

What I didn’t mention on that blog was that on Sunday, the day after her passing, I began to feel like I was supposed to be doing family history work. “I don’t know how to do that!”I told myself, shrugging it off.

I had tried for a few weeks when Paul was newborn, and I never seemed to have enough time to get into the groove before he’d need my attention again. In Australia, I had nearby access to a family history center, but I still didn’t make much progress. I had heard about James Simon and his wife Margaret’s mysterious disappearance, and I was fascinated by it. But I decided that there was a season for everything, and family history work was for those who had more time than I did.

This January, after Grandma’s passing, the urge to revisit James and Margaret’s story persisted for weeks. I kept thinking about Grandma, and I kept thinking about Margaret’s story. Finally, in the middle of January, on a Tuesday morning after I left my son at preschool, I stopped by the local family history center and said, “What do I do first?”

The librarian showed me how to correct errors on New Family Search, how to add information I’ve found, and how to start discussions. I left the Family History library praying that somehow I’d find Margaret’s mother, because I was certain the two of them wanted to be found. After just one hour of studying Margaret’s name and her mother’s blank line, I felt a spiritual bond with them.

I called my mom to say how excited I was about the progress, and a few days later, my brother Frank sent me an email saying he was working on these same people and maybe we should collaborate. Suddenly, there are three of us working on finding this family extensively.

It has been delightful, time consuming, exhausting, frustrating, exciting, boring, and over everything else successful.

Thanks to our combined research (and some funding from Mom and an ancestry subscription from Frank!) we’ve discovered Margaret Shield’s mother: Ann Dunlope. (See Margaret’s birth certificate). We’ve found so many more than just Ann, because we didn’t know much about these people. We have more than 20 new names to take to the temple for baptisms or marriages. Just a quick rundown: Margaret’s father is Patrick and she has two younger brothers (and a sister we knew about). James comes from a family of not three children but ten, and we have names for at least five of them, plus his parents (although their work is almost done!). We know when James and his family came to England from Ireland, and we may have found that James was actually born in England after their arrival. We’ve found that Margaret may have been married before she married James, that what we thought was the oldest child may have been from another marriage, and that our ancestor Margaret Ann (who was born to Margaret and James) was born a year before the two of them were married. In fact, Margaret may have been a bigamist, a thought that makes me, a reader of Victorian literature, rather excited to discover just what really happens at the end of this real-life family novel.

Each answer we get from the English records only opens up another set of questions.

Although my mind has been mainly full of Margaret Sheilds and James Simon and their children and their siblings, as I’ve thought of my open-ended goal to “do family history work” this year, I keep thinking of Ann Dunlop. To me, she is the image of success, for we have found Margaret’s mother. That is what Margaret wanted me to find back in January. As I left the family history center that first day, I felt Margaret’s presence along with her unknown mother’s as they asked me to find her so they could be sealed together.

Date for that sealing to be determined. I keep hoping that we’ll find a few more names this week.

I am the daughter of Ellen Margaret Benac, who is the daughter of Helen Ruth Wilson, who is the daughter of John Wilson, who is the son of Margaret Ann Simon (and Charles Edwin Wilson), who is the daughter of Margaret Shields (and James Simon) who is the daughter of Ann Dunlop and Patrick Shields.

If you are a part of the family, log in to the New Family Search and you’ll see it for yourself. If any of you, especially those related to James and Margaret, want to be in on our email discussions, please let me know in the comments and I can send you our emails. Sometimes I send five in an evening, just so you know.

May Day Mayday

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May Day, definition: May 1 celebrated as a springtime festival

I am feeling kind of down these days. Everyone is writing on their blogs about the beautiful flowers they are enjoying, about the lovely weather they are hoping for, about SPRING. My days are getting progressively colder and the leaves are mostly finished changing colors and dropping. I was having a hard time getting out the house before it got cold: now I can see I’m just going to spend the next few months indoors. It takes twice as long to get Paul ready to go out because I have to bundle him up. I think we’ll stay indoors.

This morning, I realized it was May Day. I have always had a special place in my heart for May Day. One year, when I was a depressed, lonely, loner teenager, a friend of mine left me a bouquet of roses on May Day. “Happy May Day!” the note said. She left them anonymously, but I knew who it was. I haven’t talked to her for years, but I’ll always remember the service she did for me back on that spring day when I felt so awkward and alone. It was a reminder that in the “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer” (Camus); I just needed to stop thinking about myself and serve, as she did.

It’s just so sad that this year’s May Day is rainy, overcast, cold, and only getting colder. I must remember that summer will eventually come again.

I miss spring! (I guess it serves me right for bragging about good produce in November!)

Mayday, definition: an international radio-telephone signal word used as a distress call

I’m trying to find my ancestors. I researched James and Margaret and found their supposed marriage date in an index of marriages. The UK likes to horde the originals and won’t let anyone (even LDS volunteers) digitize or scan them for microfilm. So, for £13 I ordered the marriage certificate. (Yes, Mom, I know you claim Grandma already had one, but when I visited, we searched her apartment and couldn’t find it.)

For some reason, I thought that the marriage certificate would tell me everything. I guess I imagined a large packet or box delivered to my door with birth information and parental details, complete with an explanation of the mystery of where, when, and why Margaret disappeared fifteen years later.

Here’s what I got: a barely legible official copy of the certificate on file in a slim, small, half-sheet-of-paper-sized envelope.

The certificate tells me their names and professions, their ages, etc. Most of the information we already knew.

But here are my questions:

If I didn’t know which James Simon/Simons/Simmons was my ancestor, how could I be sure this was their marriage certificate?
How can I figure out where they were born? Tradition holds James Simmons as Irish, but we don’t know where he came from or when he came to England.
How do I find where, when, and to whom James Delany/Simons was born? Because he was aged four at the 1871 census, he couldn’t possibly have been born to James and Margaret unless he was born out of wedlock.
Could James Delany/Simmons have been born out of wedlock in the 1860s? Wouldn’t that have been pretty scandalous for this Catholic family? Can I assume he was born to people who were married?

I am completely lost as to where to begin. I’ll head to the Family History Library next Wednesday when it’s open, but my experience is the librarians there are as clueless as I am.

PLEASE HELP if you have any experience with family history!

Note: Any Benac family members who’d like to save £13 can view and download a high-res jpg of this image here for your own family history files.

The True and Unknown Story of James and Margaret

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The story of James and Margaret touched me deeply when I first heard it. What happened to Margaret? I wanted to find her. Since today it is Grandma’s birthday in the USA, I thought I’d post about them again.

Before I began the research for this family, I found that James M. has been sealed to Margaret and to his three children. We think we know Margaret’s parents and James’ parents. They’ve all been sealed, and James has been sealed to his brothers. Now we need to go back a generation.

In doing some very preliminary research, I’ve found holes in this romantic story: I don’t think this story is actually true, and I don’t think we have the children of James and Margaret correct. Here are some things I’ve found and the questions that are raised. If any of you know anything about family history research, I’d love pointers of where to go next.

Tradition shows James M. and Margaret being married in 1867. The marriage certificate I found places their marriage in January 1869. This is the one Grandma and my mom believe is theirs, and the parents listed as witnesses are those James and Margaret have been sealed to.
James D. claims his own birth as June 1866. This is what he claimed on the 1900 Indiana Patoka census. I don’t think he’d mis-claim his own birth year when he was more than 30 years old. This birth year seems odd given his parent’s marriage date, either the certificate year of 1869 or the traditional year of 1867.
In an 1871 U.K. census, I find James and Margaret listed with James Delany, a nephew. I believe this is our James M. and Margaret because it is in the district their wedding occurred in. Also, on the census, James M. is listed as a brick labourer, which is what we know his occupation was in England. This raises many questions. First, where is Margaret Ann, who was supposedly born in 1869? Also, if James D. is James Delany, and he is a nephew, then we’ve sealed him to the wrong parents! Who are his parents? Grandma Benac doesn’t recall Uncle Jim being anything but James M.’s son, but since he was already living with James and Margaret in 1871, maybe something happened to his parents before then and he was adopted at a very young age.
I found a 1881 census that lists James M., Martin (James’ brother), and Margaret Ann. I believe these are the correct ancestors, given the district they are found in and their ages and occupations. However, Edwin and Margaret are not to be found on that census, and neither is James D./James Delany. Supposedly, then, Edwin and Margaret already left for America. When did they arrive in America? I have been unable to find them on any ship manifest between 1880 and 1885. Did they make it to America? And where is James D./James Delany? If he’s been adopted, would he still be at home as a 15-year-old boy? Where did he go?
I found the 1885 ship manifest from England to New York which lists James Simmons (42), Martin Simmons (46), Margaret Ann Simmons (17), and James Simmons (19). So, by the time they were coming to America, four years after that last census, James D. was already “adopted” into the Simmons’ family and had taken on him their surname. Where did his family go? Who were his family? And why did James M. wait four years before coming after Margaret and Edwin?
James D. married late in life. He and his wife, Neicie, were unable to have children. They adopted a boy they named Logan, which was James M.’s mother’s maiden surname. Was James D. related via James M.’s family? On which side, Margaret or James, was he a nephew, as was indicated in the 1871 census?

I need to find James D.: when he was born, who his parents were, where his parents went. I don’t know where to begin. There is so much unanswered, and the search function on Ancestry.com is not the easiest to manipulate. U.K. records are not digital — only the indexes are. So I suspect I’ll have to order the records when I’m sure I have the right one. And how can I be sure? I can’t.

Here’s what I am sure of: there is more to this family than I thought. The most important thing will be finding the right parents so our family can be sealed to their right parents.

The Romance of James and Margaret Simon (Simons/Simmons)

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I started a Benac family history project a year and a half ago. Then I got distracted by a big box of Sorenson Family History. While I remained in Chicago, I scanned the Sorenson family history stories. I am grateful I could get those stories into an electronic format. All of the baptisms and sealings have been done for the Sorenson side, back for a long time.

Lately, I keep thinking about the Benac family history project I started a year and a half ago. I know I need to work on it. I keep feeling the promptings of the Spirit urging me into action. I’m beginning again. Since it is Grandma Benac’s birthday today (it’s already April 14 in Australia), I thought I’d post about this couple in her honor.

I’ll begin telling you the family folklore. In another post, I’ll tell you what I’ve discovered.

James M. Simons (Simmons/Simon) and Margaret were both Irish Catholics, married in the 1860s in England. They had three children: James D., Margaret Ann, and Edwin. James M. was a bricklayer. When Edwin was quite young, the family decided to immigrate to New York City. Margaret had been offered a job working with her sister at a home of a well-to-do woman. She would be the housekeeper for this woman.

In 1881, just when the family was prepared to head for New York, James took a fall and broke his leg. Margaret would lose the job if she didn’t continue to New York City, so she took Edwin and traveled to New York without James, James D., and Margaret Ann.

In the course of time, letters were exchanged. Supposedly, James M.’s housekeeper, who liked James, wrote to Margaret that they were having an affair. Margaret accused James of this. James, in a stubborn Irish way, insisted that she come home and see for herself that it was not true. She refused to do that. When she stopped writing, James got worried and decided to come to America himself. James M. left England for New York with his older brother Martin, James D., and Margaret Ann. They headed to New York City to find Margaret and Edwin. (Tradition says his father Thomas also came and died on the voyage but there has never been any evidence of this.)

When they arrived in New York City, Margaret was nowhere to be found. The people at the house where she had been working told him she’d left. There was no forwarding address, and no sign of her or Edwin anywhere. James took his children and went with his brother Martin to Indiana, where his other brother, Patrick, lived.

His daughter Margaret Ann married Charles Edwin Wilson in 1888, bore him five children, including John William Wilson in 1891, and died in 1895. John William Wilson later had a daughter named Helen Ruth.

For the rest of James M. Simon’s life, he pursued his quest to find Margaret. He hired private detectives to search for her. All was in vain. He never found her. He died in 1927. Grandma Benac says she remembers the day of his funeral. His dog “Old Vick” lay on the porch by the front door after his death and refused to let anyone enter the house.

But what happened to his wife, his Margaret?

Wisdom from Our Fathers and Mothers

On a Bad Temper

“I have a terrible temper, but I control it, it doesn’t control me.”
–Edmund Z Carbine, 1864-1926

I think I may have inherited the temper. Edmund Z Carbine could honestly say “I haven’t been angry in over 15 years.” I wish I could say something similar.

On Church Membership

…the Mormons as they are called are my people, their God is my God, where they live I live (If I can) where they die I die, and there will I be buried. You see that I cannot come back.
–Adelia Rider Carbine, 1846, Iowa

Despite being driving from her home in Nauvoo, she still knew where she stood when it came to the gospel. It was true. It is true. What else matters?

On Conversion

When I was 14 years old I began reading the New Testament. I could see that the Lutheran doctrine did not correspond with it, so I must find something in accord with the New Testament. The more I read, the more I was convinced. Then I had an opportunity to go to some Mormon meetings. I found the spirit of God was there and the love of the brethren was great. I then began to pray in secret, alone by myself, and investigated the Mormon gospel [for three years]….I believed that the Mormons had the true gospel. But I wanted to be absolutely sure that Joseph Smith was a prophet for all people ridiculed him and told lies about him, but I did not believe it….I was sleeping in our barn on the hay in the month of August. I had prayed out by the fence before I went to lay down, but when I laid down I was seized upon with some evil power so I knelt down by the bed to pray again but the evil power was tormenting me and held me in torment; Then I lifted my voice in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, then the power left me. I was on my knees. I felt a wonderful change. I was looking and listening and heard a still voice but low saying “Joseph is a true prophet of god. The gospel is true. Why are you waiting to be baptized and receive the gospel?”…I then went up outside the barn to give thanks to God for answering my prayer. I raised my hands up high and said “Halleluia! Praise be to God and the Lamb for answering my prayer” and said “Yes, Lord, I will be baptized into the Church soon as I can.”
–Hans Olaus Sorenson, 1849-1944

Answers will always come to our honest prayers, even if it takes a long time. Are we senstive to the Spirit’s whisperings?

On Forgiving

They robbed and stole from me my life time earning….Two long years rolled by and I never had a good night’s sleep thinking how I could get some way to recover that which had been stolen from me. Then a messenger appeared to me and called me by name, and told me not to do as I was thinking, as that was a cowardly act. And he said, “Look”, and he showed to me many great and marvelous things, and said to me, “All you have suffered and lost is not as much as a pencil dot on this paper compared to what there is in store for you. Now be contented and be happy, and do not as you were intending to do.” I awoke and found it to be a dream or vision, and jumped right out of bed and wrote it down, and I have not been troubled since, and I don’t want to harm a hair on any man’s head, but want to do all the good I can. I called that my Savior, as it kept me from doing that which I ought not to do.
–William Benona Graham, 1852-1926

Sometimes I want to hold a grudge. But that’s not the way of the Lord. I hope I can keep an eternal perspective.

On Revelation

[Anna Clementina Hawkins] kept company [with Lucien] for about two years. He asked [her] to be his wife. But he was not a member of the Church and didn’t want to become interested…. And [she] felt that she couldn’t marry one who was not a member of the church and was not interested, so she dismissed him, which wasn’t an easy thing to do, as she cared a great deal for him. [She] had always prayed that she would choose the right one for a husband. So now she decided to fast and pray about it….Her prayer was answered and she saw in a dream her future husband just as she later saw him as he sat talking with her father, the night he came to apply for the teaching job. She was looking through a glass door behind him. And as she went back through the kitchen, her mother said, “Is that your young man?” and [Anna] replied, “Yes, that’s him.”
–Anna Clementina Hawkins, 1865-1944

It’s sometimes hard to have faith that Heavenly Father will provide for us and guide us. But He always will. Even without dreams to guide us.

The Spirit of Elijah

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Since I still haven’t received my visa, I am still in Chicago, waiting for the next stage of life. My husband has his visa, so as soon as I get mine we can mail off our 800 pounds of stuff and then get on a plane ourselves.

I’ve started some projects in the interim. The one most interesting to me right now is family history work.

The History of This Family History Project

A few years ago, when I first got off my mission and did not yet have a job, I scanned a number of personal histories from Dad’s Big Box of genealogy. I found them interesting. I wanted to continue the project but then I got a job and got busy. The files were backed up to a CD and on my computer.

Of course, at least once in the next few years, my computer crashed and I lost the hard drive completely. Last year, someone asked me if they could have a copy of the files. To my distress, I found that the CD backup was cracked. Thus, hours of scanning and OCR-ing (is that a verb?) were lost. Back to the Big Box, I guess.

So when I found out last week that I still don’t have my visa, I thought maybe this was a good time to pull out the Big Box and start over. Besides, last year I acquired a more powerful scanner when I married my husband. So, I set the scanner on autofeed, and in a few days the files were scanned. (Of course, the scanner lamp is almost burned out…) Now I am OCR-ing those that didn’t read well. I’ll add files to the server as I get to them.

I have simply loved reading the stories of my ancestors. My husband and I just returned from a Church History road trip. Now I find out that our ancestors were there at Winter Quarters and Far West and Nauvoo. Reading their stories makes it even more real than it was last week.

Here are some questions for the immediate family. Do you know who is who?

Did you know…

One ancestor was attacked by Indians and left for dead?

(an elderly Indian came along and had pity on her; after she healed, he sold her to the settlers at New Amsterdam [supposedly])

We had two ancestors on the Brooklyn?

(the mother and daughter, both midwives, paid their way by caring for the captain’s wife)

Our ancestor was the one who first settled Miller’s Hollow, later to be the site of the Kanesville Tabernacle (i.e., Council Bluffs, Iowa)?
One ancestor served a mission to Australia?

(he was shipwrecked coming home, landed on a remote atoll in the South Pacific, and lived on turtles for two months before a rescue party was successful)

One ancestor married a widower when she was 19, immediately becoming a mother of three?

(she later had 14 children of her own, including our ancestor)

One ancestor once made a profitable living by making beer?

(in Utah!)

Our ancestors helped settle the Big Horn in Wyoming?

(I have a friend from there)

Are you intrigued? Click on the Sorenson Family History tab above to find these personal histories. Here are the ancestors from above. (As I add files in the next few days, I’ll update this post to indicate which file to reference for the details.)

Penelope Kent Van Princis (Stout) [see any of the Stout, Richard or Stout, Penelope sources]
Hannah Tucker Read (later, Graham) and Christianna Gregory (Reed) [see Read, Hannah Tucker]
Daniel Arnold Miller [see personal history of Daniel Arnold Miller, plus book excerpt and sketch by daughter]
James Graham [see personal history of James Graham and account of Julia Ann]
Amanda Melvina Fisk (Stout)
Allen Joseph Stout [see life history of Allen Joseph Stout]
Franklin Jamison Graham and William Benona Graham and families [see life histories]

Rebecca's Webpage

Thoughts on womanhood and motherhood