Entries by Jeff Westover

Becoming a Great Ancestor

The image here of my family is now ten years old. I had no idea when we took this picture that it would come to represent the end of an era for my family. The picture was taken the day our eldest daughter left for her mission. Sandy and I were 45 years old. In […]

Eliza’s Letter

In catching up on all the family history news I missed over a very busy holiday season I was pleased to see that the Church History Library has at last digitized the letter Eliza Haven Westover wrote to her son Lewis in 1916. This was the letter where Eliza detailed living in Nauvoo as a […]

The 19th Century Christmas

Historians tell us that Christmas in the United States and even the world was not celebrated much prior to Charles Dickens. They claim that the Puritans of Boston banned it and that it was “quite dead” in England of the 18th century. That is all false. While some evidence suggests Christmas was quite different it […]