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.

Sacred Coincidences

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As I write this in the dark of night, my mind flooding with thoughts, I realize that I’m about to share some things with you that are deeply personal and sacred.

I recognize as well that I am about to share some history of living individuals and that I’m going to share some stories and a history that is yet unfinished. It is a story that continues to unfold.

I do it because there is a longer view to family that I think we all need to consider.

There are forces at work that we cannot see.

And there are coincidences that in time we need to recognize as something more. They are sacred, precious morsels that connect us to family past, present and future.

I’ll begin by sharing something that happened just this week. My sister-in-law, Mary Westover, sent me a Facebook message.

“I have a Family Search question,” Mary said.

I’m still getting used to that statement. That is usually how conversations begin when you get asked something as a family history consultant.

Mary is pretty knowledgeable about family history and has about as much experience as I do in family research. If she had a question for me I figured it likely had to be something of a stumper.

But I soon learned that Mary was pretty upset, too.

She had just visited Family Search and was horrified to find that someone had swapped out her great-grandmother for someone else with a similar name. Whoever did this added a bunch of children from another part of the world to her great-grandfather, listing these strangers with similar names as his children.

To make matters worse, they had initiated temple work for all these names that were similar but not really connected.

So Mary had good reason to be upset.

This is the grandmother whose name was given to her and she had invested a lot of time in working on her information.

This is a natural and good byproduct of doing Family History: you become attached. Your names become your people – family! – so it doesn’t feel good to have that changed.

Hearts that are turned can be easily broken – or at least shaken until things can get sorted out.

For Mary, it was a time of panic and tears.

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When I returned home from my mission in the spring of 1984 I had found that the world in my family –and particularly among my siblings — had changed. The 1980s were formative years for us all and in my absence the dynamics had quickly shifted.

My big brother, Jay, was likely leading the charge in change.

I do not know the details of their courtship and how Jay and Mary came together entirely. But I can recall meeting Mary for the first time at my parent’s home and sensing something about her that I couldn’t quite understand.

It was a unique feeling and one that I would only feel again when I met my wife.

Some of that feeling extended in part to meeting her daughter, Darcy, who was maybe four years old or even younger at the time.

I was quite taken with Darcy.

She was this shy little thing, almost too scared to look at me. I tried so hard to get her to trust me and I think Mary recognized that.

What I saw in Darcy was a new experience in my life – a new level to my identity.

She would become the eldest child of my big brother – the first of the next generation in our family.

Darcy made me an uncle. I wanted very much to matter to her and to be close to her and the others who would come after.

I was experiencing a lot of firsts during these years. I was struggling to find what I felt was the right kind of person to marry. That was the natural next step in my life but all around me I could only see people my age as being much the same as they were when I was in high school. But this time I had changed – and I was looking for someone who had grown some since high school, too.

Mary’s relationship to Darcy caught my attention in a significant way.

Here was someone my age that seemed to possess a rare talent and ability.

Of course, I had seen these attributes in lots of women in my life before and they are commonly associated with motherhood.

But I had not yet seen it in a contemporary and in Mary’s love for Darcy I saw absolute devotion, duty and endless love. It gave me a tremendous amount of respect for her.

I only stayed home after my mission for a few months. Then I left for the wilds of Utah and Idaho, not to return to California for nearly five years – except for occasional visits.

One of those visits came when Mary was baptized.

A few years ago Mary told me I had played a role in her conversion story. I’m sorry to say I do not recall doing the things she said I did. But I’m sure it was driven out of not only my love for the Gospel but also of a desire to grow closer to this new sister and my first niece.

I did not recognize then that trip, that day or that event as a huge moment in our family history. I did not see it then.

But I see it now.

In fact, I see now that room was filled with a lot of people I didn’t know then as being important to me.

In the room there that day was my future wife and my first daughter – as a baby.

Coincidence? Maybe.

Sandy and Mary had met while working in the same place. They both just happened to work for the same company that both my brother and my dad did. In fact, it was the same company – Longs Drugs — that I had once worked for in high school and the one that I would work for again some four years later.

Coincidence? Perhaps.

Looking back on it now we get good laughs from all these coincidences.

One of the great artifacts in our family archives is a certificate Sandy received from completing some training she received from Longs. That certificate bears my father’s signature. It was signed years before Sandy and I met.

Sandy and Mary were both single Moms. I would also call them kindred spirits. I wasn’t there but knowing them now I can easily imagine how quickly they took to each other.

They were not only close in age but similar in circumstance and made of the same heart – sisters in every way, a fact that has not changed from that day to this.

Sandy was at Mary’s baptism because she loved her.

Sandy, as long as I have known her, has always expressed her love and admiration for Mary.

She has told me many times that she knew then Mary would be a lifelong friend.

I don’t know at what point Sandy and Mary discussed the Church but I don’t find it any coincidence that their relationship took a deeper turn as Mary embraced the gospel.

I didn’t really enter into their association until a few years later.

I came home to California in late 1988 and returned to work at the same company. On weekends I would sometimes travel out to Modesto to visit Jay and Mary and to enjoy the company of my young nieces.

I wasn’t around much when Amy was born but I was there quite a bit when Katy was born and got quite attached to the kids.

Sandy and Mary had remained friends and, in fact, Mary was sometimes babysitting Aubree, who got on famously with her future cousins.

Mary was instrumental in Sandy and I coming together because she knew us both so very well.

I’m sure it felt to her like a long-time effort to make it happen. But it happened because Mary gently urged me to pay attention to this woman whose child she was babysitting.

The story of our courtship has become something of legend and I’m not sure if I’m getting all the details right here because I wasn’t part of the conspiracy. I was just victim to it, you could say.

But Mary showed Sandy a video that was shot during a trip to Disneyland. It included me because I was there with Jay, Mary and the girls on that trip.

The way the story goes Sandy saw me in the video, heard angels singing, called the guy she was dating to break it off and then announced to her parents that she had found her husband.

That’s the legend.

But there’s another video. And in that video you can clearly hear Mary and Sandy strategizing how to set up a “chance” meeting between us.

Whatever is truth and whatever is legend in that story doesn’t really matter at this point.

What matters is that we met – and Jay and Mary were right in the middle of it.

As Sandy and I did meet, and there was attraction there, I can recall wrestling a little bit about becoming involved with a woman who had a child.

I had never considered the idea and I wondered if I should be bothered about it.

As my feelings for Sandy developed I began to take inventory of some things.

I recalled my mother’s situation. She grew up with a step-father. And I thought of him – a man who had taken on another man’s child. That worked out – why wouldn’t it work out for me?

I thought of my brother. And, by that point, I thought of my little brother, too.

Both had married single Moms.

But mostly I thought of Mary.

Her quiet devotion to her children put her heart on public display and it was good. To me it made her stand out from most other women I knew that were my age. I saw those same sacred attributes in Sandy.

She wanted all the right things and would work and sacrifice in whatever way she needed to in order to do right by her child.

Mary taught me to see that in Sandy – and for a man who suffered in the brutal LDS dating scene of the 1980s — it was like water to a man in desert.

If it had not been for Mary I doubt very much I would have had eyes to see it.

What I was learning about Mary during these years was that she had an uncommon vision for family. That she could see me as her brother or Sandy as her sister wasn’t a far-fetched idea.

But for her to see Aubree as her niece and her children and our yet unborn children as cousins is something special.

And she saw that.

What makes that so surprising was that when I met Mary she had so few family connections of her own. Her parents were living in difficult circumstances and her siblings were scattered far and wide. She had half siblings, some that at that point I don’t think she even knew about.

Her family situation was mixed at best and hopelessly disconnected. She was largely alone.

But what I was to learn about Mary Westover was that she would gather and rebuild her family – seemingly from the ashes of disaster – one person at a time.

And she just loves them. All of them.

She leaves nobody out.

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Family Search has a “helper” feature. Using that feature I was able to log into Mary’s Family Search account this week to see what was going on with her stolen great grandmother.

Clearly someone had not done even the most basic of research and attached the wrong names to the wrong people.

This happens a lot with common names and there likely is no more common couple pairing in family research than the names Thomas and Mary Brown.

These are the names of Mary’s great, great grandparents. They came from Scotland.

The people who had hijacked her family names all hailed from Canada.

I was able to detach those names and the “sources” associated with them and restore Mary’s grandmother using information that Mary was feeding me.

I peppered her with questions about her Grandma Mary.

Where was she born? Who were her parents? What were the names of her children? Do you have dates and names for them?

All these questions and more Mary knew and instantly answered me as I asked them.

I was amazed.

I asked Mary where she had found all and was keeping all this information if it wasn’t on Family Search. She told me she was using Ancestry.

That’s pretty common.

Many use Family Search just as another resource in searching for family names. It isn’t their primary family history venue.

That is a mistake.

Family Search needs your constant attention for one reason and one reason alone: that is where temple work is centered.

In the end, that is all that matters.

When you don’t keep Family Search as your primary record keeping location you will run into situations like Mary’s. And it can be heart breaking.

I like Ancestry and I use Ancestry.

But Ancestry, for all of its tools and resources, has the same problem with public information sharing as Family Search does. Much of it is wrong.

What makes Family Search better is the fact that it is infinitely better staffed to catch and deal with wrong information than Ancestry or any other paid-for resource ever can be.

After all, there are tens of thousands of Temple and Family History Consultants out there and who knows how many thousands of volunteers constantly keeping watch and helping on Family Search.

Family Search has one central goal – to have one tree for the entire family of man and to take them ALL to the temple.

Ancestry and other resources online take a different approach.

Instead of one tree they deal with millions of trees.

On Ancestry you can make your family tree public and many people do because they are looking for information from other people who might help them make their trees more complete.

In fact, you can link one tree to another in Ancestry.

That can be a good thing or a bad thing – depending on the quality of research that goes into each tree.

On Family Search we’re all together working on one world family tree.

Anyone can add to it – and anyone can take away from it.

The way you keep information from changing is to keep vigilant watch over your ancestors and keep adding sources, pictures, documents and supplementary information that strengthens the record.

Over time, with many people adding source material to the names of their family the more solid the tree becomes.

I’m not saying to get rid of Ancestry. I’m saying to use it for what it is and make Family Search your #1 priority.

Put all your information there. Sources get listed and linked there. Upload photos, stories and histories there.

Don’t leave your family alone EVER on Family Search.

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My first clue that something was “going on” with our family on the other side came when Jay and Mary went to the temple to be sealed.

I don’t recall the exact date but I’m certain it came after my Grandpa passed away in 1988.

They went to the Los Angeles Temple, I think because the Oakland Temple was closed at the time. There were not a lot of family members that could be there because of that fact but I was a single guy with a lot of time on my hands so I traveled to LA for the event.

My brother and I were both a bit surprised to run into my Great Uncle Gordon at the temple in the dressing room. Jay had invited him, as he had several other family members, and Gordon came.

To be honest, neither Jay nor I knew Uncle Gordon well. We had only had a few scant opportunities to interact with him during our growing up years.

But he came out of love and kindness. He came because we are family. He came out of respect not only for what was happening in the temple that day but also out of concern for his brother’s grandchildren.

I can never forget him for that.

I can recall how he sat us both down in that dressing room and expressed love for us and on behalf of his brother he expressed pride and gave counsel.

Jay and I then had a very spiritual experience that I dare not recount here. But we talked of it later with wonder and gratitude. It was a moment that was appropriate for the Temple and one that demonstrated plainly how connected we remain as family even after death.

After the day was over and I began a long drive home I had hours and hours to contemplate what had transpired.

It was a humbling moment of revelation that made me both giddy and breathless. But I struggled to determine what it meant and why we were given that vision.

For days I prayed over it and contemplated it.

It was only after a long period of pondering that it came to me.

This all happened because of Mary.

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I was able to get Mary’s great grandmother back in pretty short order.

Once done, I decided to see what I could quickly find on Mary’s Thomas and Mary Brown and their children.

My goal was to just pick the low hanging fruit that is so freely available on Family Search, just to solidify their records so that others who might come along and try to hijack them again would have something in front of them to give them pause.

I spent about an hour linking what records I could quickly find.

I learned that Thomas and Mary lived at least into the 1930s and their eldest son, also named Thomas, was known as Reverend Thomas Murray Brown – and he lived and died nearby and had a large family of his own.

These new bits of information, combined with the good work Mary had already done, went a long way to strengthening the Brown family record on Family Search.

This family history “incident”, common as it is, also yielded some uncommon observations for me personally – and they have kept me up the past several nights.

Mary’s family back in the early 20th century was located within a short distance of where my mother’s family lived during the same time frame.

Coincidence? Maybe.

But all the evidence we were using to re-connect her Mary Jenkins Brown to Thomas Murray Brown suggested that Tom Brown was a coal miner in Scotland who came to work the coal mines in northwestern Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio.

That was the same situation for my wife’s family.

All of Sandy’s father’s family are from that very same area in the early 20th century – and were coal miners as well.

Coincidence? Perhaps.

But how many loose connections over time start to form a visible structure?

Just how many coincidences do you have to experience before you start to suspect something greater is going on?

After all, Mary had many close brushes with the Westover family long before she ever met Jay.

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Mary’s childhood years were spent in Northern California and she lived for long period of time in the Concord area.

Coincidence? Not at all.

But she first attended school for a few years where Aunt Evie was teaching and she lived within walking distance to where we would live later as a family.

Coincidence? Ummm…hard to say.

Mary tells me that she grew up wanting to work at Longs. She loved the women’s uniform smock, the white one with the green piping. Is it any wonder that’s where she ended up?

I’m not sure where her interest in family history took root. I’m sure it came with her development in the knowledge of the gospel.

I can recall listening to an exchange between Mary and my Mom years ago when my folks were in Concord.

Mom was advising Mary on how to find out military information about her father. I can recall Mary very anxiously wanting to know about her father’s service record and Mom being a little fearful of what Mary might learn.

I never asked my Mom why she felt that way and now I kind of regret it. All I know is that in the ensuing years Mary did learn about her father and that through whatever she learned of his history it caused her to see her father with greater respect and love.

I met Mary’s father a couple of times – oddly enough, in the company of Mary’s brother.

By the time I met him he was old and living alone. His condition and his circumstances were pretty rough. I can recall talking with Mary about him after she would visit him, too.

When he later passed away it was Mary who made arrangements for his burial with military recognition and it was Mary who started to tell the stories of her father’s life to her family.

As her mother aged and had health issues it was Mary who would travel to be there for her. Her mother’s situation was not ideal either but Mary did all she could to help.

I don’t get the impression that life was always happy between Mary’s parents or that her childhood was filled with many great family moments. All I know is that in their waning days it was

Mary who went to the rescue and since their passing it has been Mary who has honored their memory.

She has also gathered her siblings and made efforts to get to know them and their lives.

When I think of the “welding link” that the Prophet Joseph spoke of in regards to family history and temple work I think of people like Mary and my Mom – lone agents in their families with the vision of what an eternal thing the family is.

Hundreds of years from now, when Mary is someone’s great, great grandmother visible on Family Search, will they know the savior she is on Mount Zion?

Indeed, they will.

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How was what happened in the Los Angeles temple that day because of Mary?

Well, I want to be careful here. I don’t want to speak for my brother.

But let’s be honest.

Jay would not be the man he is without her.

We can all say that. I see that in my wife. I saw that in my Mom. And I see that in JoAnn now with my father. I see it in most men I know who are happily married.

I know the dark paths my brother was on during the years I was gone on my mission. He had a real rough go during those days until he met Mary.

I know that day at the temple came as a result of a lot of hard things. And Mary was the light behind it all.

God said, rather plainly, “It is not good for man to be alone.”

And that is because when we’re alone we’re lost. Nearly worthless.

That day in the temple happened because Mary gave Jay all the right reasons to be there. Those reasons are the very same ones, by the way, that draw us to do our family work in the temple too.

We are no different than they are.

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When my mother passed away two years ago we witnessed her transition from this life to the next. At one point during her final days Mom said that she could see her mother and my sister encouraged Mom to go to her.

We watched in amazement as Mom reached out with her arms fully extended, smiled and then…thought better of the whole thing.

She wasn’t yet ready to leave the family she was with for the family she knew that awaited her.

There are those who scoff at the idea that loved ones are there when you die or that the visions of family are just vivid memories brought on by a sick and dying brain.

But with my Mother I had seen the difference.

I spent many nights with my Mom at the hospital and more than once her condition was precarious. I can recall an incident in the summer of 2012 when Mom was in the hospital and saying and doing the craziest things.

I remember the fear I felt as I considered never being able to have a lucid conversation with my mother again. This came on a night when she thought she was at the San Diego Zoo and wanted to bring home a pet chicken. When she came around, days later, she had a good laugh about that.

But I’m convinced those long, desperate nights for me as her son were to teach me the difference between a mind that was sick – and one that was dying.

On my mother’s death bed she was all there – for days her physical body failed but her mind never left her.

Some 10 hours before she died she made a very concentrated effort to communicate and her message was simple and meaningful. Her last words were “I love you”.

Of course, my mother’s passing was not unique in any way. Many, many people have similar and even more compelling exchanges with family on the other side during the dying process. Ask anyone of any faith or even of no faith at all – and chances are you’ll hear a story or two of it happening. It is very common.

But I’ve also learned that you need not be on death’s door to have such sacred encounters with departed family members.

Sandy, for example, once had a very vivid exchange with her grandfather – and experience that was unknowingly shared with her sister nearly a thousand miles away on the same night.

These things happen to seemingly all kinds of people – even the famous.

I recently read a great story about Martin Harris that I had never heard about before. It was the story of how he came to Utah very late in his life.

After arriving in Utah his heart had softened to the point where he wanted to be re-baptized and fully reconciled with the Church. On the night before his baptism he had a dream. In the dream he saw his father, standing on a ladder. He asked his father why he was on the ladder and his father said that he could not take his next step until Martin had acted in his behalf.

Martin was re-baptized in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City and Brigham Young was there. He asked Brigham what the dream meant and he told Martin his father was telling Martin to do his temple work. After Martin was baptized, he then was baptized again, both for his father and for another family member.

These very personal family encounters are not chance meetings. They are not reunions. They are targeted experiences designed to get results – and the result is ALWAYS action that makes a family stronger and an individual progress.

Whether they come to us through dreams, visions, thoughts or promptings – or we go to them through doing family history, genealogy, photos and temple work – the end result is the same.

Together we work towards making covenants that will help us progress in the next life. We cannot do it without them and they most certainly need us as well.

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Okay – I’ll confess. I took one more peek at Mary’s Family Search account.

Another coincidence had made me curious.

Her great, great grandparents came over from Scotland in 1922 – nearly 80 years after my 4th-great grandparents, William and Lindsay Findley, came over from Scotland.

William Findley was a coal miner.

He lived about 90 miles from where Mary’s great grandfather was born.

Coincidence?

Maybe. Or maybe not.

I go back a little further on Lindsay’s line and what is the family name I see?

Brown.

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Last weekend I got a brief email from my Dad. Attached was a PDF edition of a Cottam family history volume – the work of JoAnn’s family.

I’m thrilled to receive it. It is 280 pages of wonderfully detailed stories and history of a stalwart family.

I include it in our document archives because Westover/Cottam history has been made. They are a part of us and we are now a part of their glorious heritage.

I haven’t had a chance to get through much it. However, I can see rather quickly that their history has a strong connection to a place named St. George.

That’s funny.

So does ours.

The coincidences just never stop.

Ask about Grandpa

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One of our long term projects is a video we’re producing about the life of William Riggs. His video will likely be the first family member we feature whose last name is not Westover.

I was quite young when Grandpa Riggs passed. But I do have a living memory of him.

The interesting thing to me about Grandpa Riggs isn’t so much my limited memories of him but rather the fact that his influence continues to be felt and cherished even now, nearly 50 years after he passed.

He led the most ordinary of lives and yet he endures in the memory of his children and grandchildren in a special way.

You should ask about Grandpa.

I guarantee you’ll hear stories of integrity, of faith, of enduring adversity, of humility and of strong family ties.

Grandpa Riggs was not a man of means and he held few positions of prominence. Outside of his family I’m not sure many remember him. But within the family he is legendary and his story is one you must simply discover. Listen to how is he talked about — I guarantee it will teach you a lesson about yourself.

Grandpa Riggs inspires me today in many ways. His brand of honesty, high personal standards, and strong-but-quiet influence are rare qualities.

I have had the opportunity to learn about Grandpa Riggs from my father, my grandparents, my cousins and from my great aunts (his daughters). I have a few collected writings about his life and was recently studying them as part of the video project. And while I cannot claim much in the way of personal experience with him I feel his influence profoundly. Through my family I have come to appreciate him.

This thought came to me in the middle of the night — a night when I went to bed with Grandpa Riggs on my mind.

I was contemplating his situations in adversity — the fact that he lived in poverty much of his life and successfully raised a family under those conditions. I thought of the trials he faced in losing an older child to death and in handling the long term illness of his wife. Of all of his life circumstances there are several that I could dwell on but for whatever reason his missionary service keeps coming into my mind.

Will Riggs was one of our earliest family members to serve a proselyting mission — but we have a scant record of his experience and service.

Here we are, more than 100 years since he served, and I’m wondering how his missionary service shaped and influenced the rest of his life. How wonderful it would be to know more about that experience.

Grandpa Riggs left only a brief one-page summation of his life behind, that I know about. Perhaps there is, somewhere out there, a journal or recollection of his personally from that period in his life. I just don’t know.

In thinking about this as we work on his video I am inspired to ask about the missionary service of all family members.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could archive something from living family members who served that could be written for future generations?

I long ago learned not to ignore these kinds of feelings when working on family history. They come from somewhere.

So part of our effort this year will begin to collect and archive some missionary experiences from family members. I will reach out to others in the family I know that have served and I ask here publicly for your efforts in this regard.

Who knows? Perhaps when your 100 year anniversary of service arrives a great grandchild might be curious enough to want to read it.