Faith, Love and Fidelity of Heart

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Rarely can a complete story be told of a pioneer ancestor that doesn’t come from a personal journal. But through good fortune we have been able to piece together the life Ann Findley Westover lived and present it here in a new video:

We cannot help but think that more can be learned of this beloved pioneer mother and grandmother.

Her life after about the age of 30 was stable to mostly one location. She served a high profile, central role in Westover family life and in the daily life of the community in which she lived in Mendon, Utah. She touched many lives. We think stories of Ann’s mortal journey may continue to surface.

Ann’s growing up years in Scotland we know little about, other than the Findleys were poor, working class Scots dependent upon coal mining. What we do know is that they were very close and they remained that way all their lives. Her father, William Sr., was present in Ann’s life until the late 1880s. We know precious little about him or Ann’s mother, Linzy. No known record exists detailing their life experience, thoughts or feelings.

Her experience on the pioneer trail would have been interesting to capture. She came as a teen age daughter — and she pushed a handcart in the successful Daniel D. McArthur Company, a handcart experience that gets little notice because it came in front of the Willie Handcart Company by nearly 2 months. Notes we found in Mendon Ward records in the Church History Library tease us a little bit in this regard. Many primary meetings featured Ann telling pioneer stories and we have to wonder how many of those stories were her own.

Likewise it would have been significant to know Ann’s thoughts about plural marriage. She and Edwin spent effectively just 12 years of their lives together. And though they had five children the bulk of their experience was spent in separation from each other, a fact that was common to plural wives in Utah history.

They were both devoted to the gospel of Jesus Christ and to each other. Edwin frequently made trips to Mendon, even before Ann lived there. But when he died in 1878 Ann was just 40 years old. It was not uncommon for widows of the time to remarry. Ann did not.

Instead Ann focused her efforts on serving the children of her family and of her community.

Our first real break in learning more of Ann’s personality came in finding the city of Mendon website that showcases Ann’s personal history. That history was written by a local sister who was asked to pen her memories of Ann more than a decade after she died.

She got some of the details wrong — for example, listing her as a wife to Charles Westover instead of Edwin — but we were thrilled to get the tidbits of information about Ann’s service in the Church and the community. We learned that Ann’s inclusion in city history only came after former children she served wrote to the city to remember her.

The image at the top of this post is of the Old Rock Church in Mendon, a building that Ann no doubt spent many hours in during her lifetime. It was located on the town square, kitty corner to the house that she lived in. That pioneer structure was built in the early 1860s and was torn down and replaced in 1914.

Listed below are links to various other sources we used to compile the history and some of the images used in the video:

The Ebb and Flow of Mormonism in Scotland 1840-1900 — BYU Studies

Scotland Saints on the S. Curling 1856 — Mormon Migration Records

Biography of William Findley, Jr. — FamilySearch.org

Isaac Sorensen’s History of Mendon — A Pioneer Chronicle of a Mormon Settlement

Leadership, Planning and Management of the 1856 Mormon Handcart Emigration — State Historical Society of Iowa

Life Sketch of William Ruthven Westover — WestoverGenealogy.org

The Reluctant Bride — Dorothy J Schimmelpfennig Ph.D.

Westover Pioneers

Plotting a Family History Tour

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We are quickly approaching our 2016 Family History tour in New England. For more than a year we have had this marked on the calendar to visit sites of Westover Heritage in New England.

One of the more enduring mysteries we are hoping to make progress on will be the lives of Amos and Ruth Westover, and their son, Alexander.

Amos Westover was caught between generations. His father, John Westover, was a mainstay in Sheffield, Massachusetts. Amos was one of several brothers, among the youngest, in fact. A few of his older brothers were loyalists. After the Revolution life got pretty rough for those loyal to the crown and a few of the Westover brothers took off for Canada, where the King was handing out land grants.

We know that by 1790 Amos had married Ruth, had several children, and then took off for Canada with his brothers to claim land as well. It paid off more than a decade later — in 1802 — when he was give 200 acres of land. The records show that Amos was torn for some reason about his Canadian homestead. He returned to Sheffield for a time but then went right back to Canada. Sometime after 1812 he left altogether and pioneered his way to Ohio.

In those years Amos and family spent some time in the Lake Champlain area of Vermont — perhaps close or in association with the Beal family. During these years — from approximately 1795 to 1805 — Amos and Ruth had a few more children, inclusive of son Alexander and daughter Olive. Where these children were born is in dispute. There is some evidence that maybe Olive was born in Canada. But a child or two may have been more in Vermont.

Around 1815 the Westovers and the Beals staked claims on the Ohio frontier — in a place called Rush Township. They had to know each other well because within ten years there Alexander Westover would marry Electa Beal — and his sister Olive Westover would marry Daniel Beal. Olive and Daniel stayed in Ohio, eventually burying his parents and taking over the family farm. Alexander and Electa would suffer from the breakup of their family due to Alexander’s untimely death in 1834.

So our tour this fall will include stops in Ohio — little Rush Township and area — where we hope to find graves and land records. Then we will press on to Sheffield — where we will explore John Westover’s home and the close environs of Simsbury, Connecticut and Windsor, Massachusetts in pursuit of Westovers and Griswolds and Cases and Mortons — then we’ll go up into Burlington, Vermont and even across the border into Sutton, Quebec, where the Westover name in Canada took root not from Amos but from his loyalist brothers.

Along the way on this winding trail we will divert to explore some not-so-ancient history of my mother’s side and find a few graves from my wife’s family. Of course, where we can visit family on the road we will take every opportunity to do so.

To see our rough path for this fall’s travel please click on the animated map below….

Love Stories of Family History

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Perhaps one of the most overlooked areas of doing family history are the love stories of the couples who build the family. Every couple has a love story.

Historians caution us that couples of the past did not always marry for love. Some married out of necessity and others married because of cultural traditions of the time. But I like to look at love stories from the perspective of the end. In other words — what did they accomplish? — versus how they began.

For example, the love story of Albert Smith, Sr. and Sophie Catherine Klauen was far from the usual boy-meets-girl variety. Both had already been married and had families of children before they met. It wasn’t attraction but rather survival and spiritual obedience that brought them together.

They came from different worlds and spoke different languages. There was every reason for them NOT to be together.

And yet, in the end, looking at it backwards, theirs is a wonderful story of love and sacrifice.

Albert was a stalwart Mormon pioneer and early member of the Church. He lived in Nauvoo, marched with the Mormon Battalion and was called to help settle Manti, where he fought the crickets every season in an attempt to harvest crops and he helped to build the temple there. Long before he met Sophie he wives and children.

Sophie’s story equally relates a full life before she met Albert. She was married and had seven children with her husband Peter in Denmark. Shortly after Peter unexpectedly died Sophie had a spiritual dream of a visit by missionaries bringing her a message from Christ. Her dream came true, she later met the missionaries and joined the Church. With her remaining living children she left Denmark for England and then joined the Willie Company in England to migrate to Zion. You know the story of the Willie Company. Sophie survived, losing one child along the way. But she was penniless and homeless when she arrived in Utah.

Albert could be said to have lived several lives. There was a life as an early Latter-day Saint in Nauvoo. Then the life he lived as a pioneer, first in getting to Utah and then in carving out an existence. His first wife, with whom had had several children, died in September 1856. He married just a month later to Rhoda Gifford, a widow with several children of her own. Then, on Valentine’s Day 1857, he married Sophie.

You have to put the lives of all of these people in context with the history taking place. The fall of 1856 was when the Mormon Reformation took place, a period when church members were called to repentance and asked to live more righteous lives. It was a time of fervor, of re-baptism, of greater commitment to the faith. At no other time, historians say, was the practice of plural marriage more widely accepted. Many outside of Utah and outside of the Church looked upon that practice in a salacious way but the truth of the matter is that plural marriage was a matter of great faith and even survival. It was a principle they believed came from revelation.

In the case of Albert and Sophie, it was also a practice with a practical upside. Sophie arrived with the Willie Handcart Company in late November 1856. She was completely destitute. Her family was taken in by local Church members in Salt Lake City and literally had to be given all the necessities of life because they had absolutely nothing left. During this time Sophie attended a meeting presided over by Heber C. Kimball.

Before leaving England Sophie had been given a blessing, encouraging her to go to Utah. In that blessing she was told that she would meet a prophet there, that her testimony of the restored gospel would be strengthened as she sacrificed in helping to build the kingdom. Sometime between late November 1856 and February 1857 she was attending a meeting and she met Heber C. Kimball. He did not speak Danish and she did not yet understand English. But somehow they communicated and President Kimball assured Sophie that the Lord was aware of her sacrifices and would see that her needs would be met. Sophie was convinced President Kimball was the prophet she was told she would meet in Zion.

Albert was in this meeting as well. And when President Kimball said many of the single mothers who had recently come to Zion needed husbands he hesitantly volunteered to help. Sophie was assigned to him and he took her home to blend in with his other new wife and her family. Between them were more than a dozen children who were not Albert’s own. On February 14th — Valentine’s Day, ironically — Albert and Sophie were sealed in 1857.

Can you imagine? Albert at this point was about 53 years old. Sophie was much younger, around 33. They had a language problem. While ALbert had a large farm and what many considered the largest home in Manti it wasn’t THAT large. And in addition Albert’s oldest son, Azariah, who was a pioneer in his own right and also a veteran of the Mormon Battalion, had long before suffered a devastating injury that left him with seizures and erratic behavior. Most people were afraid of him. In fact, Albert’s other new wife, Rhoda, eventually asked for a divorce and it is speculated that part of the reason was because of the challenges with Azariah.

Now forward the clock more than 30 years. Albert and Sophie have added seven children to their union and have raised them faithfully. It was Sophie who nursed Azariah for years and helped him to become healthy enough to live on his own, marry and raise his own family. Records show Albert and Sophie were active in Family History and attended the Temple sometimes three times per week to complete the work for better than 1300 names on both sides of their family.

Over the course of time they became beloved to each other. It’s a wonderful love story to contemplate.

It stands in great contrast to another love story central to the history of the 20th Century Westover family. William Westover was the son of Edwin and Ann Westover, of Mendon, Utah. This great patriarch of the family was born in 1861 and early on he had to grow up. When he mother moved to Mendon to aid her parents and her dead brother’s family in 1869 William became the man of the house because his father, Edwin, returned to the mission field where he was called in Southern Utah. As he grew from boy to teen he was active in the beautiful community of Mendon and fell in love with a local girl who was likewise the offspring of Mormon pioneers. Her name was Ruth.

William and Ruth would endure a seven year long courtship before finally being able to marry. We don’t know exactly why the delay — it was certainly unusual for the time. But finally, in 1883 when both William and Ruth were both 22 years old, they married in a grand event celebrated by family on both sides. Like their parents before them they struggled to make a living and pushed the boundaries of the frontier. They suffered from difficulties in bringing children into the world. There was sickness, and hardships, and poverty. There was also faith and community service.

Their story was seemingly met my tragedy. William developed a cancer that was discovered when he was only about 41 years old. He died in 1903, leaving Ruth to make ends meet on a struggling farm in an isolated place known as Rexburg, Idaho with eight children between the ages of 1 and 16.

Ruth was heartbroken. Surviving family histories of the time relate that she “lost her mind” in the decade she would outlive William. Their condition was desperate. But like Albert and Sophie, William and Ruth and their children had the foundation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ that they lived by. Looking back at their story — desperate and tragic as it was — you can see the success and happiness that came of their love story. They left behind a family of children that would go on to love and accomplish much, writing their own love stories along the way.

What love built between William and Ruth could not be destroyed by the harsh realities of the world.

Note: The photo at the top of this post is of Arnold and Mary Westover. Mary is a granddaughter of Albert and Sophie. Arnold is a son of William and Ruth. Theirs is another great love story of Westover family history.

Chuckin’ Chickens

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The final day of Rootstech is known as Family Discovery Day — a day when the Church sponsors the event for youth and families. I was able to get two of my daughters to come for a visit.

The effort is obvious. The more we engage our youth in family history they more inclined they are explore it on their own. There were a variety of activities set up, my favorite being a booth where the kids could call a grandparent or other loved one to hear a story. Here is my daughter Allie hearing a famous story from my Dad:

The preservation of stories — even simple goofy stories like this one — helps to connect our generations. In fact, the telling and the re-telling of stories was the constant theme of the entire conference. That is one of the more powerful ways that family history touches the hearts of every generation.

We also got to hear a presentation from Elder Renlund of the Quorum of the Twelve who told us that engaging in the work of family history would give us the promise of protection in these Latter-days:

“Brothers and sisters, I promise you protection for you and your family as you take this challenge, to ‘find as many names to take to the temple as ordinances you perform in the temple, and teach others to do the same.’”

How does this happen? Elder Renlund and his family gave an entire presentation, which is summarized at this link.

But for me the protection that comes from doing family history is achieved by recognizing how it connects to nearly every aspect of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In all my studies of Christ family is squarely in the middle of it. He taught of love and being like His Father. The scriptures, which at the end of the day end up being nothing more than the history of families, continually emphasize the idea of being perfect. The Prophet Joseph taught that when Christ said “Be ye therefore perfect” a more correct translation of the word “perfect” would have been “complete”.

That changes the whole phrase — “be ye therefore complete” — can you indeed be complete without your family?

For me, doing family history is gospel living. It allows the life lessons of those we love from the past to be shared with us. We gain from them their wisdom as we come to recognize their trials and challenges in their efforts to build a better life for us.

My experience last year of running into the man in the wheelchair remains a pivotal moment in my family history experience. Like last year, I heard at Rootstech this year the testimony of the unbaptized and the unconverted of doing family history. They cannot fully explain their drive or desire to do the work.

But they do it.

As members of the Church, we have some context for that. And I’m grateful for that knowledge.

I may not yet have my children fully engaged in this work — or even have captured that vision entirely for other members of our family. I feel sad they don’t have this element in their lives and not just for safety’s sake alone. There is a level of happiness that comes from doing this work that would bless the life of anyone.

We will press on. Hopefully in time others in the family will come to grow in awareness of the treasure that this work is.

Seeing the Sword of Laban

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For several years now the Church History Library has teased me. Knowing what I know now about much of our 19th century family history I’ve wanted to go there to see what I could find out. Today, after registering for Rootstech, I had a few hours to kill before my first class. Now was the time.

I hoofed it on over there and walked into the front door, meeting a man in a suit and wearing an ear piece. He looked at me and asked what I was looking for.

“The sword of Laban,” I said confidently.

Ok, I didn’t say that but I wished I had thought of it at the time.

But that is the difference between this facility and others I have visited associated with family and church history. In this building they will allow even amateur researchers like myself access to Church records.

I decided I would play nice and follow by the rules. They checked my ID, made me log on to my LDS.org account and then I had to watch a video about how things are handled and what the procedures were there at the library.

After going through all that I put my visions of Liahonas aside and meekly asked for the ward records for Mendon, Utah.

In the time I had to spend I thought a worthy goal would be to find out if Ann Findley Westover was really primary president in Mendon for 37 years.

I had about ten minutes with a historian. He seemed impressed with my target and what I knew about Grandma Ann already. He was confident that maybe the records would show something of her calling and service.

As it turns out the ward records dated back to 1861 (I knew that) and all I needed to do was to sort through those. They made me sign, ditch my coat and phone, and sent me to the reading room where I awaited 4 rolls of microfilm. I wouldn’t see the records themselves – because they had them on film and that was safer for me to handle.

I thought about that sword again – surely they had a picture, no? I still lacked the nerve.

The first roll of film had nothing I could use, though I spent a good 45 minutes going through it. There was no rhyme or reason to what was filmed. One minute I was reading notes from the Bishopric in 1890 and the next I was dealing with YMMIA meeting notes from the 1950s.

The second reel I hit pay dirt. “Primary meeting minutes, November 5th, 1888, President Ann Westover presiding.”

There she was. Week after week, first for years and then for decades.

These were comprehensive meeting notes. Immediately I felt the pangs of guilt for the 2-line meeting notes I kept as Teacher’s Quorum secretary years ago. These pioneer meeting notes outlined total attendance (over 60 kids usually in the Mendon Ward), who spoke, what they sang and the themes of the meeting.

In looking at week after week of these notes one trend became clear: President Westover was the storyteller of the Mendon Primary. She was always relating something – the story of the blind boy who had faith, the story of Moses from the Bible, the story of Joseph sold into Egypt. My favorite note was “President Westover tells stories of early church history”. Boy, what I wouldn’t give to hear that story today!

In all, I spent three hours in 19th century Mendon, perusing minutes all the way past the year 1906, when Ann’s name stopped appearing the minutes and she no longer presided.

I doubt she was Primary President for 37 years…though I think she spent close to that time in the Primary presidency because she was a counselor for several years before she was made president.

It was a good training session for me. And you can bet I’ll be back.

I wanna see that sword.