A Tale of the Old West and Bad Family History

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Tonight I went fishin’ for a while. I don’t get nearly enough opportunity to do that –“fishin’” as it relates to family history.

Here’s how it works: I go to FamilySearch or Ancestry and enter very broad search terms – say, a surname like “Smith”.

Then I sort out all the results to drill down to just what I want to see. Sometimes it is birth certificates, sometimes it is census records, sometimes it is just something else.

Tonight it was photos.

I went to Ancestry and trolled for all photos I could find associated with “Westover”. I got that beauty of an image above from this little fishing expedition.

Those boys are brothers by the name of Canfield.

I had seen that name somewhere before so I had to click on it and figure out the connection.

I got the connection alright – but the side story was a much better find – a true tale of the old West.

What made it even better was the alleged mystery of a 120-year old event spilled over on the pages Ancestry as descendants of the men involved continued to debate the tale of cattle rustling, old west gangs, suicide and murder.

Interested? Read on.

First, the family connection: the man in the bottom left of that picture is Moroni Canfield.

This picture of Moroni and his brothers was taken in about 1890 – about three years before Moroni died – or was murdered or committed suicide, depending on whose history you believe.

Moroni married Sarah Evaline Westover, eldest daughter of our Edwin R. Westover and his wife, Sarah Jane Burwell.

Moroni and Sarah met around 1870, when Edwin was living in Hamblin. Both were about 20 when they married.

Edwin has no real part to play in this story. After Moroni and Sarah were married they left Hamblin for several years and returned in 1877, where Edwin traded his property there to Moroni for a team, harness and wagon for Edwin to use on his mission to Arizona.

Moroni and Sarah would have a family of 8 children and his life until the 1890s mirrors that of so many in Southern Utah from that time. They struggled financially and fought the elements in their attempts to build Zion.

With a name like Moroni you have to know there is a strong Mormon connection, too.

Moroni’s father joined the Church, went to Nauvoo and later to Winter Quarters where they came west when Moroni was just a boy. He was thoroughly invested in the Church.

A story is told of how Moroni once came upon two US Marshals who were in Utah hunting down polygamists.

Moroni asked these two men why they were there and the marshals shared they were on their way to Enterprise to arrest Thomas Sirls Terry, a leading figure in that community and a known polygamist.

Moroni was able to give the marshals the slip and get to the Terry farm to tip off the family, who got “Ol Man Terry”, as the marshals called him, out of town just in time.

That story is told in contrast to the real criminal activity that the ranchers of southern Utah had to deal with in horse and cattle thieves.

The Canfields lived not far from a place called Desert Spring, which happened to be a crossroads of sorts between Beaver, Utah, Pioche, Nevada and Utah settlements to the north and mining camps to the south. Desert Spring was also the base of operations for a man named Ben Tasker, a genuine old west outlaw.

Tasker was known for his gang of outlaws who would first provide aid to travelers passing through Desert Spring and follow them for short distances only to rob them in the middle of nowhere.

Their primary source of income came in the way of cattle and horses – and Tasker’s gang stole them by the hundreds, changing brands or butchering them to be sold in the mining camps.

There are legendary tales – some untrue, I’m sure – of just what a tough customer Tasker was.

One story talks of him shooting a man and then using his body as a table while Tasker played cards.

The Canfield brothers knew too well how lawless the times were and they had a personal connection to Tasker.

Their sister, Lucy Philena, was married to a man named Thomas Emmet.

Lucy Philena’s history talks a bit about the woes in her marriage. Though she and Thomas were married in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City when they returned to Southern Utah and started their family it seemed that Thomas wasn’t around much. The history says he traveled a great deal “on business”.

Thomas Emmet

His business was “his dealings in cattle and horses”.

The Moroni Canfield history on Ancestry is a bit more descriptive of Thomas’ activities.

According to their version of things Thomas rode with Ben Tasker’s Gang and neglected his wife and small children for long periods of time.

The Canfield family did all they could to help Lucy Philena but they grew weary of Thomas’ antics and were constantly rescuing him from the trouble he would get into.

On the night of June 28, 1893, Moroni and a few others were herding about 1500 head of cattle when something happened.

In the morning, Moroni was found dead – shot in the head.

From Moroni’s history on Ancestry we read of why some descendants of Canfield felt Thomas Emmet and Tasker’s gang had something to do with Moroni’s untimely death:

“Emett was a pretty rough character. He and a friend Bob Tait ran and dealt with the Ben Tasker Gang. Ben Tasker was a horse and cattle thief operating all over the territory. He had his headquarters at Desert Springs, at the junction of roads from Beaver, Iron Springs, Mountain Meadows and the Nevada mining camps.

Ben Tasker had been arrested numerous times, but always found some way to get away. He and his men would take what they wanted and kill anyone who stood in their way.

The Canfield brothers because of their sister had been trying to keep Emett out of trouble and talk some sense into the pair. Nothing worked. They grew tried of seeing Philena and her little ones hungry and without proper care. She had lost a number of babies by miscarriages. They were sick to death of pulling him out of a hole and trying to feed and clothe this little family.

So, they decided to catch Emett in the act. Well they caught him and Bob Tait both in the act. Stealing Cattle.

They had come prepared so they pulled their guns on him and Tait and told Emett they were sick and tired of getting him out of his messes. That the law was on to them and was out to get them.

Now, Grandfather said, I told him “I do not want to see your face any more in Utah or close about. You head for Texas as fast as you can. It will be less costly for us to take care of your family than to bother with the likes of you. If we ever see you around in Utah again I personally will shoot you.”

[Insert spookly old west whistling music here]

Thomas Emett evidently didn’t need to hear any more.

He lit out of Utah heading south and that was the last the Canfield’s heard from him – until Moroni ended up with a bullet in his skull.

To quote again from the history on Ancestry, “Moroni and the Canfield herd would have been in the right place and the right time to be easy pickings for Thomas Emett or one of his associates. Revenge is as good a motive for murder as money, and Emett had both.”

The surviving family of Thomas Emmet doesn’t care for that version Canfield family history. They have a very different point of view.

Another family historian on Ancestry – a descendant of Thomas Emett – was able to prove that not only was Thomas hundreds of miles away in Arizona at the time of Moroni’s death but he was also, fortunately, dead, too.

Thomas had died 10 years before – in Phoenix, evidently of smallpox.

Yes, thanks to the modern sleuthing of family historians, they cleared the name of Thomas Emmet from the charge of murder.

That doesn’t mean the controversy had diminished. His memorial on FindAGrave.com, after several contrary comments, now notes:

“There are many unsubstantiated rumors that still persist even after 125 years. I have letters, life stories, and 1st hand accounts of what happened to Thomas. My great grandfather, Don Thomas Emett, his son, told others to ignore what people say, we know what is true. We are told by the authorities to not gossip. It is sad 125 years later people can’t wait to tell me how bad my great-great grandfather was.”

Thomas’ family had long compiled proof of his innocence, most notably the receipt of his spurs and his saddle, which were shipped to them after he died.

Even still, it wasn’t hard to make the connection to Tasker or to Emmet.

Tasker at the time of Moroni’s death was in jail in Beaver, Utah. His reputation as a frequent escaper from jails was legendary because his roaming gang would often overwhelm lone guards or sheriff personnel.

Tasker’s men were in the area – and revenge was not their only motivation in what Moroni was up to.

Moroni, you see, was then under contract to move and sell and very large herd of cattle – right through the heart of west central Utah where Tasker did his most notorious work.

Perhaps that was a reason why Moroni took the job – one that would change fortunes for him and two of his friends.

That transaction was nearly complete, all Moroni needed to do was to finish the move, a task that took him near Beaver and a task that proved to be much more difficult than he anticipated.

Moroni had a pocketful of money but what he had collected to move the cattle was dwindling fast and he would find himself in a negative cash position if he didn’t deliver soon and deliver as many cattle as possible.

A news report of Moroni’s death explained his fate was sealed by the weather, a lack of manpower, sleep and the realization that Moroni had lost big on his deal.

Moroni Canfield, they reported, killed himself after a midnight thunderstorm scattered his herd and he felt all was lost.

For decades the descendants of the Canfields and the Emmets held to their respective stories about the demise of Moroni Canfield.

But the ultimate vindication of Thomas Emmet came from an unusual source – Moroni’s mother, Elizabeth Canfield.

In 2013, a family member posted to FamilySearch a letter that Elizabeth Canfield wrote in July 1893. She told a vivid tale of horror at learning the real story of Moroni’s demise.

She described how Moroni had “been in the saddle” for three days without sleep, trying to keep the cattle together all while wrestling with a fast coming financial disaster. The longer it took him and the more cattle he lost the deeper the hole he was in.

The combination of financial stress and physical exhaustion led Moroni to one very sad conclusion.

Elizabeth writes:

“The night before he did this his reason left him. Pratt [his brother] could do nothing with him. He tried to get him to go to bed, put his arm around him and tried to get him to lie down and that was the night he was to get to water. He would not do it and about 10 o’clock the cattle got the scent of water- 1,511 head of them. As soon as they smelt the water, they went wild. The boys rushed after them but could only find 300 head…”

“F. Rice was the only man with a pistol. He took it off and laid it down by his bed instead of putting it under his head. Of course Roni would not sleep and got up. Told a boy to go round the wagon and get his horse. As soon as his (the boys) back was turned, he picked up the thing, put the muzzle in his mouth and fired…”

“…After he was buried, I was looking over his clothes and found a little scrap of paper in his overalls pocket. He told the boys that all was lost. The cattle gone. But if he had only waited till day light he could have seen the stock or the most of them at a distance.

On the paper he said ”I Moroni Canfield have staked all and lost. I have ruined myself and friends. Their names are E.V. Hardy and L. C. Maneger (Marriager?). I have lost all am not fit for a felons cell. Good bye. May Father in Heaven have Mercy”.

Of course, life went on for everyone else.

Moroni’s mother lived until 1908 and is buried in Hamblin. She is remembered for her faithfulness.

Lucy, Thomas’ widow, remarried a man named John Day in Hamblin and they had three children, including a set of twins.

Sarah Westover Canfield Bowler with her 2nd husband, James Bowler.

Moroni’s widow Sarah remarried nearly a decade later and lived until 1927.

There are many lessons to learn from these tragic events.

For the family of Thomas Emmet, there has to be some joy in his vindication. He may have been a lot of things but he clearly didn’t murder Moroni Canfield.

Not all of our relatives have great things to be said of them. Even still, why would we settle for anything less than the truth?

For those of Moroni Canfield’s family – especially those who laid the blame for his death on Thomas Emmet – what do you have to say for yourselves?

Surely it is hard to be unsympathetic to poor Moroni. He had troubles, clearly.

But as I sat thinking of all this I couldn’t help but wonder about the story of Ben Tasker.

Certainly he has descendants and his history is somewhere, no?

Well…no. At least not that I have found yet.

A Google search seems to return a lot of links back to FamilySearch about this guy. They turn out to be histories of other people – many of them victims of Tasker and his gang.

They were the cattle rustlers of the Old West in Utah, no doubt about it.

I found Ben Tasker living in Beaver in the 1880 census. He’s listed as divorced and living alone. He was 61 years old.

But there’s not much else written about him that I’ve found yet.

For whatever reason I want to know how and when he died. Did he go out in a blaze of bullets? Did he jump off a cliff in Bolivia? Or did he die of old age?

That’s a history hunt for another day.

Knowing Brigham

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I was 17 when I graduated from high school and I had to wait until I was 19 to serve a mission. That gave me a full year to pursue some college.

I vividly recall a freshman history class where a professor during a lecture about the American Indian gave a passing opinion of Brigham Young, calling him “a monster”.

I was shocked.

I had a Sunday School version of Brigham in my mind. I knew him as a prophet.

To hear him called a monster in the context of history stirred me to find out more. I began my own casual study of Brigham Young that year to figure out how he could be considered by anyone to be a monster.

The lesson I learned is that history can be bent to fit just about anyone’s politics.

And I learned the only history you can trust is the history you process on your own.

The same is true of family history.

Brigham Young was a man both reviled and revered – because he had a position that was prominent among thousands of people and because so many recorded what he said and did.

Those who knew him, those who lived near him and those who interacted with him far outweigh his distant critics.

I remain most fascinated by the Brigham Young of the 1840s.

He led the great missionary work of the Church in Great Britain and then came home to defend Joseph – and then led when Joseph was killed.

Brigham was many things but during this decade of his life his accomplishments were staggering.

Historians give Brigham his due for this time frame but I contend the Brigham Young most of the world dwells on is the Brigham who spent the last 30 years of his life in Utah.

And they judge him on things like polygamy alone. In so doing they miss one of the greatest of American stories.

He was outspoken, opinionated, direct and at times seemingly Teflon-coated when it came to his critics.

Brigham was deliciously flawed, ingeniously productive, forever provocative and endlessly fascinating.

He was complex. He was less than perfect – and he knew it.

He was a man, I think, that had I lived in his time I would have followed and admired – just as did many of my family.

Over the years I have read just about everything I can about Brigham.

But I haven’t studied him much in these past five years – a period when my own family history has been central to all my studies.

What I have discovered recently is the colliding of those two worlds – Brigham’s history and our family history.

I find they enrich each other in wonderfully detailed ways.

Truth be told, I think we tend to glorify – or dismiss — the larger figures in history through hero worship or by whitewashing their flaws through hyperinflation of their accomplishments.

Movies are especially guilty of this.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film production that portrays Brigham in the way that all the reading about him has developed his character in my mind.

Family history has further tempered that.

Charles Westover, my 4th great uncle and brother to Edwin, once had Brigham stay overnight in his home when he lived with his family in Silver Reef.

Of utmost concern to Charles and his wife Eliza was the validity of their temple sealing.

Charles came west in 1848 with Brigham’s 2nd company, one of 1200 souls who made that trek. On that trek was his mother, Electa, and both brothers Edwin and Oscar. There were other extended family members who also were part of the company.

Charles at that point was unmarried, only 20 years old and he had just joined the Church when he was baptized at Winter Quarters.

Reading Brigham’s history during the years of 1847 and 1848 is fascinating in context of the story of the Westovers at Winter Quarters.

Brigham returned to Winter Quarters with a very clear picture in his mind about the future of the Church. It was there that Brigham re-organized the First Presidency and it was there that Brigham really became the leader – the prophet — of the Church.

So many of our family members were there to witness these proceedings.

Unfortunately, they left no records of their take on those events. They were caught up, as most were, in preparing to leave the next spring for Salt Lake City.

Charles was pressed into service as a teamster by Erastus Snow. This relationship that began at Winter Quarters would last a lifetime. For many years the paths of the Westover family would cross often with Apostle Erastus Snow.

Also part of that massive company was young Eliza Ann Haven, young daughter of John Haven, himself a minor figure in Church history.

The Havens lived for a time in Nauvoo. Eliza was a child during these years.

She recalled in later years the time she spent in Nauvoo. She had vivid memories of Joseph Smith, having had meals with him and seeing him preach.

When she was 12 Eliza Ann was baptized by Brigham Young in the Mississippi river.

Eliza Ann was later among one of the last to receive her temple endowments in the Nauvoo temple.

Eliza, along with her sister, was present at the great Church meeting held in August 1844 when the body of the Church was forced to choose between Sidney Rigdon and Brigham Young to lead the Church.

Eliza left a stirring testimony that she witnessed the image, voice and likeness of Joseph Smith during that meeting in the person of Brigham Young.

I get a bit perturbed when I read critics who dismiss this event.

They note that not one journal of the event from the time that it occurred has ever been found. Not even the exacting detail of Wilford Woodruff’s journals mentions the miracle at the time it happened. All known recorded versions of the event were made years, and in the case of Eliza, decades after it happened.

But Eliza’s version of events was written in her own hand. She conveyed her memory of the event to her son in a letter in 1916 in her own words.

“When he spoke it was the Brother Joseph’s voice. I gave a jump off my seat and said, “Our Prophet Joseph has come to life. We have our President back”. I looked up and there stood Brother Joseph just as plain as I ever saw him when alive. For a minute, I heard Brother Joseph’s voice and saw his features; then a mist seemed to pass from Brother Brigham’s face and go up. Then there stood Brother Brigham talking to us. Hundreds saw the same thing that I did, but not all that were present.”

Did this really happen?

In my mind it matters little. What matters is that Eliza said it happened. She made a record of it and we have her words reliably.

There are those out there who try to take the personal history of ancestors like Eliza and turn them into people they were not.

In my online travels researching Eliza Haven Westover I came across a blog post by a woman claiming to be a great, great, great, great granddaughter.

She used images of Eliza Ann and Charles in her post as well as quotes from some well-known history of the couple.

But woven into the narrative was a story about Eliza Ann I had never heard before.

According to this blog post – and nothing else I have ever read elsewhere before about her – Eliza Ann was allegedly approached by Brigham Young to become one of his plural wives.

This allegedly happened before she met Charles Westover and gleefully the writer of the post claimed “Grandma Westover told this story”, stating that Eliza Ann evidently rebuffed Brigham, saying she wanted her own man.

The writer than claimed to possess the same “in-your-face” characteristics of her Grandma Westover and it was these characteristics that allowed her to defy current prophets who exclude gays from Mormonism.

I believe this story to be false – and a distortion to the memory of Eliza Ann Westover.

There’s no way Brigham could have or would have proposed marriage to Eliza Ann Haven prior to 1848, if ever.

First of all, plural marriage previous to 1848 didn’t happen in this fashion. Older men in the church practicing plural marriage didn’t just willy-nilly hit up young girls.

The Church was not even public with the practice until 1852 and few members of the Church even knew about it.

It was a pretty confidential act at that time and it surely would have involved other key individuals, both in the leadership of the Church and in the families of all parties involved.

But more importantly is the fact the Eliza Ann and Charles Westover were strong members of the Church who kept clear records. I doubt there was an encounter with any Church leader that they didn’t record or share.

Of the many, many known remaining records they left behind there is not one mention of this kind of exchange between Eliza Ann and Brigham Young.

In other words the writer of the blog post, one who claimed to be one of Eliza’s direct descendants – lied.

Whether you’re a college professor or a direct descendant decades later making claims you better be able to back them up.

But that’s not how the dishonest world works and it is exactly this kind of information that makes monsters of people when they are not.

Eliza Ann and Charles first met on the trail – and later they became known as the first couple to be married in Utah in 1849. (I doubt that’s true too. The media of the day reported it that way).

Like many others they were married in Salt Lake but long before there was a temple there. They were sealed, at the hand of Brigham Young, in the home of Erastus Snow.

Years later, as Brigham was planning to spend a night in their home while he was on his way to St. George, Charles and Eliza debated whether to ask him about the need to go to one of the newly constructed temples to have their sealing renewed.

They anxiously looked to each other until the very moment that Brigham was sitting at their table and finally, discerning their anxiety, Brigham asked them what it was they wanted to ask and Charles blurted it out.

Brigham chuckled, waved his hand and over a bite of pot roast said their marriage was more about the priesthood than a temple.

The answer was yes, their temple sealing was perfectly valid and, no, they didn’t need to renew anything in the temple.

These associations with names known now in history were quite familiar at the time for the Westover family.

When Charles took on a plural wife in 1856, he married Mary Shumway – a close friend of his wife, Eliza Ann – in Brigham Young’s office, with Brigham conducting the ceremony.

Years later, it was Brigham who called Charles and Edwin to go to St. George.

The world just wasn’t so large then.

In fact, if you consider just the 1200 people who crossed in Brigham’s 1848 company you can equate that number of people to about three contemporary LDS wards.

Add to those the several hundred that had come to Utah in 1847 you still have less than 3000 people in Utah those first few years – smaller than most stakes today.

Of course they knew each other.

Of course there was interaction. It was a very, very small world.

While reading of the early conversion story of Brigham Young in 1832 I came across the name of Eleazar Miller – a name I had seen somewhere before.

Miller baptized Brigham and was one of the missionaries who taught him.

After some thought, I finally remembered where I had heard that name before.

Miller was the man Electa Westover was sealed to in 1856 during the period of the Mormon Reformation.

She never lived with him and if you look up Eleazar Miller on Family Search you will see that he had many plural wives – and that Electa is not counted as one of them.

I don’t know why that is.

I don’t know what Electa thought of plural marriage.

I do know she was faithful and obedient.

When called to be sealed to other men, Electa did it. When the Saints were encouraged to be re-baptized to show their commitment to the faith, Electa did it. In all things it appears she was true and faithful.

But she never left her sons. And they never abandoned her.

Upon arriving in Salt Lake, as head of the house, Electa was given a lot in Salt Lake and Edwin and Charles set to build her a home before they built their own.

When after four or five years they moved to Cottonwood to farm on larger lots Electa moved with them.

When Edwin and Charles were in Cottonwood they both took on plural wives. Edwin married Ann Findley and Charles married Mary Shumway.

Of course, the world has made much of the 19th century Mormon practice of plural marriage. Everyone, it seems, has an opinion about it.

For some it remains – along with other Mormon practices – something of a stumbling block.

Some try to rationalize it as just their way of life or they assume it was something that just came easy because they were pressured by Brigham Young or others to live that way.

We know from well documented evidence that plural marriage did not work out for many people.

Brigham, in fact, had several failed marriages. Albert Smith, another relative who lived in Manti, also endured a divorce after one wife just could never be satisfied.

But for the Westovers practicing plural marriage it did work out. There were moments, the record shows, where there were difficulties for Charles between his two wives. But the record is likewise clear that Eliza and Mary Shumway remained close for the rest of their lives.

Edwin and his wives – Sarah Jane and Ann – co-existed for over a decade living in the most desperate of circumstances in Southern Utah. When Ann took her children and moved to Mendon it wasn’t to escape the plural marriage arrangement. It was to help family.

As I’ve contemplated plural marriage over the years I’ve long considered myself blessed for not having to live that way. But my contemplation of such a sacred law is not fair in my time and in my age. We just cannot compare our life now to their situation then.

They didn’t have the Internet. They didn’t have scores of ready resources to read and study and ponder.

The people we call family who lived during these pioneer times left all they had, traveled great distances at considerable risk of their lives, and took upon themselves what they considered sacred acts of obedience on faith.

There are huge lessons in all that and the largest comes in our judgment of them. I wouldn’t be too quick to label anyone a monster or others stupid for doing what they did.

Our time is filled with challenges we have been called to endure. From the distant past our ancestors are watching us live out our mortality and face the challenges that are ours. I wonder if they think they could do what we are doing? I wonder if they stand in harsh judgment of us?

Of course, they live now where faith is not the element it is here. They know there is life after death. They have moved on to their next steps in development.

They know things we know not.

But let us remember as well that while we admire them for what made them so faithful they were, in most respects, just as we are.

Reading the journal of Albert Smith I came across this passage from 1883:

“… As I was meditating on the principle of baptism for the dead it comes as though I was surrounded with the spirit of my forefathers opening the principle to my mind, giving me to understand that they were looking to me and my children to attend to those ordinances for them that they cannot attend themselves.

Not only did they open the principle to my mind, but they showed me the necessity of my teaching my children faithfulness and to live that we might be prepared when the temple is finished to go there as well as their brethren and sisters and attend to those ordinances for which the temple is built.

Suffice it to say that I did not sleep all night. It seemed as though they were with me until daylight opening my mind to many things…”

Can you see the connection? Can you see how the chain of family serves, both in this life and in the life to come?

Brigham Young lived to see the St. George Temple dedicated. He said, “What do you suppose the fathers would say if they could speak from the dead? Would they not say, “We have lain here thousands of years, here in this prison house, waiting for this dispensation to come?” … What would they whisper in our ears? Why, if they had the power the very thunders of heaven would be in our ears, if we could realize the importance of the work we are engaged in.”

Charles was there. Eliza was there. Edwin was there. Electa was there.

After all, they knew Brigham.

And they shared with Brigham a vision for their future family…and of their past family.

This is NOT Alexander Westover

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Certain dates tend to stick in the minds of most avid family historians. 1890, of course, is notorious.

That year of the federal census was mostly lost to history due to a fire in 1921 that wiped out most of the records. Nearly every family has a missing piece of information tied to that census – and that causes challenges in solving family mysteries.

Years of war – 1860-1865, 1914-1918, 1940-1945 – these are worldwide event windows that have profound effects on family history.

For me one date in history is a very definite line in the sand: 1838.

1838 is the year when the first photograph of a human being was first recorded.

That is why I know that at least 18 people on Ancestry.com are dead wrong.

They have posted and shared the image seen on the right as a picture of Alexander Westover.

But that is NOT Alexander Westover.

Alexander Westover died in 1834. The earliest known photographs of people in the United States only date back to about 1839. That can’t be Alexander Westover.

Fortunately, we know who the man is.

It’s Levi Murdock – and yes, he’s family.

He is Ruth Althea Rowe’s grandfather (her mother’s father).

Levi is actually older than Alexander – by about nine years. But he lived much longer, passing away in 1879. If I had to guess, I would say this picture dates from the 1850s at the earliest.

Levi joined the church in 1840 and traveled with his family west from Indiana in the 1850s. He settled in Ogden and had a successful farm there until he passed at nearly 90 years of age.

We don’t know who first confused the picture of Levi for Alexander – but the Internet has perpetuated the inaccuracy.

This little incident proves everything that is wrong with Ancestry. 1 person posted this image in error and several others re-posted it as fact. I contacted a few of those who had posted the image and told them as gently as I could who the picture really represented.

A few got upset with me — despite my best efforts to tell them why it couldn’t be Alexander.

Genealogists live by a strict code: it you can’t prove it, it’s not true.

That is really hard to do with photographs.

Most think that rule applies to names and dates. But it should apply to photographs, too.

In this case, all one has to do is the math. Alexander died before the age of photography. I would love to have an actual picture of Alexander Westover. But it is not possible.

I would love to have a picture of his grave, too. On Family Search right now, someone has posted a picture of Alexander’s grave on Alexander’s memories page.

But, sadly – like the mistaken image of Levi Murdock, I fear the posted picture is false.

You see, there is no record of a grave site for Alexander.

We know when and where he died. We even know with official government documentation of the time when he and Electa were married. But we have no documentation on his death and burial.

I am guessing that is because Alexander was likely buried on the farm he was working. They were pioneers – there just wasn’t a town cemetery back in 1834 in Goshen, Ohio – at least not one we have found.

So Alexander remains somewhat of a mystery in terms of what he looked like and where he is laid to rest. I am hoping that some modern day sleuthing can resolve some of this because Alexander is a key part to the Westover family story of the 19th century.

But so too is Levi Murdock. And look at that handsome mug of his – who can’t look at him and not see family?

A lot of people ask me why these old time photos aren’t more happy.

We have to remember that taking a picture then was quite a production. Albert Smith, in his journal, talked about traveling to Salt Like to get his “likeness” done, which is what they called the imaging process of people back then.

Albert bought a new suit for the event.

Likely, Levi did the same. Look at how sharp he is. But why isn’t he smiling?

Probably because he had to stand absolutely still for over a minute while the exposure was made.

Lost in our review of these old pictures is the reason they were doing it. These pioneer families and individuals took these images precisely because they knew we’d be looking at them today.

It was important to them.

Contemplate that.

Name Games of Family History

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Our ward is headed to the Temple this weekend, a combination of Ward Temple Night and Youth Baptisms. I volunteered some family names for the kids to do, forgetting that the well was temporarily dry for baptisms. We’ve been doing a lot of baptizing the past several months.

I so spent some evening hours this week working to see if I could come up with some names. My mother’s side has thousands and thousands of names but over the years both my brother’s wards and my Mom’s wards and stakes have raided the stockpile – and I was fresh out of baptisms.

I have come to rely on two very important family history elements when it comes to temple work: prayer and dreams.

Since becoming so heavily involved with family history I have experienced a change in my dreams. It is such that even my wife comments on it because I guess I’m a vociferous dreamer.

I cannot and do not lay claim to any kind of spectacular or direct experiences in my dreams.

Unlike some, I have never had a dream of an ancestor I never personally knew.

I dream of my grandparents frequently and I always enjoy those dreams even if I cannot make sense of them.

Earlier this week I dreamed of my Mom’s step father, Pat Caldwell.

He and I were very close in the years before he returned home to Louisiana. This most recent dream was more about a car and in the dream this grandfather was telling me he needed a car that could hold more of his family.

Like him, I have a weakness for big cars – so there was nothing unusual about this dream.

I hadn’t really done much work on his family so when I sat down after work one night this week I felt that maybe I needed to take inventory of what was done.

After all, it’s possible. I don’t know if they have big cars in the afterlife but I’m not past using a car as a sign that he wanted family work done, you know?

I found that Mom had done quite a bit, including temple work, for his family.

As so often happens, I lost track of time in reading names, looking for holes, and seeing when and where everyone lived. It gave me yet another look into his background. But my night ended without a single name that could be baptized.

As I thought about that later as I was trying to sleep I realized that I wasn’t really organized or focused in the right way in sitting down to find names.

To be honest, the whole data mining experience of family history is not my favorite.

Finding names, aligning dates, plugging holes in timelines – it is all tedious work.

It requires a detective’s mind and a ton of patience.

That’s just not me, kids.

My love of family history comes from the actual history – the stories. I really enjoy discovering the lives of my family and telling their stories.

But I had made a commitment to supply names for the temple.

I knew there had to be some I could find before this weekend.

I realized I had omitted the most important step of all when I began my name finding experience.

I had forgotten to pray.

So I prayed.

And then I just sat there for a minute thinking about where I should go. On my screen my tree in Family Search was laid out before me. I’ve looked at it so much and worked on it so regularly these past five or six years I’ve come to realize I have actually memorized details on all sides for several generations.

Within a few minutes I felt I should take a fresh look at the Welty family.

My mother’s mother was named Welty. I’ve spent a lot of time on that line in the past year.

They lived in the same area of southwestern New York state for generations. Many served in the Civil War. If they had one common family trait that I could pin point it would be that as adults they never stayed single long.

They married long and if a spouse died they remarried very soon. I had noticed this in several Welty names I had worked on.

They also had some unusual and even beautiful names. One name that I discovered months ago was the female name Glenora. I fell in love with that name the first time I saw it.

As a young married couple I can recall the fun Sandy and I had contemplating potential names for our babies.

We made long lists of names, both male and female. We never learned the gender of our kids before they were born and I think part of the reason why is because of the fun we would have together as we bounced names off of each other.

As a result, each of our children have names we love and spent a lot of time considering – and we’d likely never change the names we gave them.

Family played a big part in naming our kids and there is a story or a connection with each one.

But I’ve often wondered how we might have been influenced had we both been more active in family history during our baby naming years.

The name Glenora might not have been a finalist but it would have made the list.

Glenora Welty is mentioned on only two census records from the 19th century – at least that I have found so far for her.

Her temple work is not done because we don’t have enough verifiable information of her birthdate and she just up and disappears when she was about 7 years old.

She was born in 1869, the 2nd daughter to George and Maria – and her big sister was named Emma, who was just a year older.

I did a fresh search for Glenora and came up empty.

Well, kinda sorta not really.

You see, I noticed something in looking at the 1870 census – a record I had looked at previously.

In that census, when she was only 2, her name is listed as Glencora.

I never noticed that before.

Quickly I made a search for a Glencora Welty – and I came up with zip.

Nothing. Frustrated as ever.

Part of what makes it so frustrating is that George and Maria lived a good long time and we find them on the 1905 state census from New York and Emma is living there still – at the age of 38.

But Glenora or Glencora is nowhere to be found.

For whatever reason, I’ve thought for a long time that maybe she died as a child.

And I thought how horrible that would have been for them as a family.

But then I thought of the names George and Maria gave their kids. They had a son named Willis, and that’s a family name that I’ve seen a few times in the Welty line going back.

It made me wonder if the names Emma or Glenora or Glencora were in some way inspired by their families.

As I pondered that I began looking back.

George was the son of Jacob Welty, the eldest son and 3rd child of eight in this family.

George was also a Civil War veteran, being in his early 20s during the war.

I had been to this family record dozens of times over the past few years.

George and Maria married right after the war in 1864 or 1865 and I never looked for George again in Jacob’s house.

But I noticed for the first time a link to the 1870 census for Jacob and I began to wonder just how many of the Welty’s eight children were still there.

To my shock, I find on that census that George had a new little sister. She was born just before George left for the war.

Her name was Cora.

Is it possible this sister was the inspiration for naming a daughter Glencora?

I don’t know.

But I thank little Glencora or Glenora or whatever her name really was.

Because Cora Welty was quite a find.

Cora married when she was about 20 and her name become Cora Kinney. She had two children.

Something happened to her spouse and Cora remarried a widower who was some 20 years her senior. She had two more children with this new husband.

And of course, all these children got married and had families.

Suffice it to say there are plenty of new family names headed to the temple for baptism this weekend.

And I have a mystery on my hands I just have to solve. Almost all of Glenora’s family has been to the temple – including now her Aunt Cora.

I’m sure they’re together. And I want Glenora to know – we will NOT forget her. We will find her. Her name, whatever it really is, is permanently on my brain and in my heart.

Westovers in Rexburg

Land and Legacy: The William and Ruth Westover Story

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William Ruthven Westover only lived to be 42 years old. Those of us who are older than that do not have much of a problem remembering 42 years of time. It just is not that long.

But for a man who lived such a short life William sure had to learn the lessons of patience that come with waiting long periods of time.

From histories that have long existed we know that William and Ruth had to wait seven long years to marry. And we learned that one of his last mortal acts before he died was turning in the paperwork to complete his claim in Rexburg putting the Westover ranch at last in the Westover name. For whatever reason, William had to wait 13 years to complete a 5 year claim.

What we don’t know from those histories was why William had to wait so long for these things to happen. Those questions we answer in our newest video, presented below.

I was really hesitant to put William’s name on our project list this year, though he falls into the line of natural progression we have pursued with these videos. I hesitated because I wasn’t confident we could find enough information about him and his life to really even make a video.

I was wrong.

While we do not have a journal and really even lack much in the way of direct evidence of William’s life and activities I learned a huge lesson in perusing the histories of those around him to build the story we tell in the video.

We tend to forget that the world was smaller then. Lives of family and neighbors affected each other in significant ways and never was that more true than in the life of William Westover.

For William as a boy and a young man it meant doing the work of the head of the house. Due to his family’s circumstances William was thrust in to the role of provider. This was the reason why William and Ruth waited to marry. Without William’s work his siblings and cousins simply did not eat.

Surely William and Ruth wanted their own place so that they could raise their own family. For whatever reason they chose to wait to marry until a time when they could leave Mendon. Once they married that is exactly what they did.

When they moved to Rexburg it was once again due to a family situation. William and Ruth moved to help his big sister Emma’s husband, Walter Paul.

In the research of this story I came to really love both William Westover and Walter Paul. These men were separated in years and in talent. But they were connected through marriage and the land they pursued together.

William didn’t have to take a quarter claim from Walter in order to have a farm. He could have simply filed his own claim with the government. There was plenty of land to go around. But he did it to help his sister and brother-in-law and their large family.

This is what families did in those days. This is what William had done all of his life.

William took a quarter claim because both he and Walter knew he could develop it. It was a desperate situation that took years but William eventually conquered the task.

Another man who took another quarter claim from Walter was not as successful. One history of Walter Paul suggests that the struggles of the quarter claims worked by William and this other man led to Walter Paul’s financial disgrace. That history suggests some bitterness over those circumstances.

I did not find evidence of that.

The newspaper clippings and court records that exist suggest that nobody in Rexburg escaped the financial turmoil of the times. The years 1893 and 1894 were times of panic and financial depression. Country-wide many were affected and many were destroyed. Those living in remote Rexburg, Idaho suffered greatly.

Walter Paul was a high profile public figure in Rexburg. He was the Justice of the Peace, the Coroner, a president of a Quorum of Seventy, a leading figure in the first local theater and a prominent merchant in a furniture store and a hardware store. While he had a large family with many older children who worked hard too Walter and Emma did not keep a farm.

William and Ruth worked their property. They had at first a small dugout home and then later a house that was built on the ranch property. They worked for years to bring successful crops and that only came after building canals to bring water to the property.

The other claim, for whatever reason, didn’t develop and didn’t prosper. When Walter had to file for bankruptcy for his in-town businesses his farm land north of town was thrown into jeopardy. It languished in the courts as administrators at the land office debated what to do with the land in settling Walter’s affairs. Their indecision was complicated by the fact that one quarter of Walter’s claim was productive and the other was not.

Stipulations of the Homestead Act of 1862 stated that 10 acres of the 160 acres had to be started within 6 months. That’s the part most are familiar with. But when you divide a claim as Walter did you fall under a different set of rules. These rules put all the effort that William and Ruth were making at great risk of loss.

The answer that came to Walter was the result of his work as coroner. The town of Rexburg had a cemetery closer to its center in 1893 but nobody was happy with it because it was filled with lava rock that made it very difficult to manage. It was hard to dig in and placement of graves was haphazard. Rexburg officials were looking for an alternative spot for the town cemetery.

It was Walter’s suggestion, as a settlement to the court issues surrounding his bankruptcy, that he donate the unproductive quarter claim to the city for its cemetery. This was a suitable solution to most associated the case – except for federal land office administrators. They still wanted William’s portion.

A compromise was struck only when William agreed to file anew, a commitment that basically required him to start over in waiting another five years before the land could officially become his.

Of course, William was not sick when this deal with struck. But knowing the end of his story – and the story of what the ranch came to mean to his children and grandchildren – well, it makes the ranch that much more important to me today.

As I’ve stated before, I did not grow up with the Westover Ranch in my life. That was a place of the stories of my grandfather. Only in recent years have I visited the ranch and have invested myself in it emotionally.

Learning William’s story draws me closer than ever to it. To me, it is sacred ground.

In fact, I would even tell you that I’ve entertained thoughts of purchasing plots in the Rexburg cemetery for my family because I want dearly to be so associated with the Westovers (and the Pauls) that are buried there.

This, once again, shows the power of digging into our ancestor past.

William is, like his father, a man I want to know and to converse with. As men of this earth we have little in common beyond our last name. But as children of God and as family to each other I value the lessons of their lives and the sacrifices they made for me and for my children to follow.

At the end of the video you will see a list of all the histories we used in producing this story. Reading these histories give me a new appreciation not only for those the histories are about but also for their children and grandchildren. These individuals are the grandparents and great grandparents that I’ve known growing up – people I have admired and looked upon with wonder for their goodness.

These are all amazing generations. I am glad to know them beyond just names on paper. They inspire me to try to be a better person.