Of Mothers, Cemeteries and Headstones

Before Mother's Day, Dad and I met at the cemetery to place our flowers on Mother's, Tina's and Mark's graves.  I took great-grandson Xadrian Winterton with me.  As Dad and I were intently trying to drive  wires into the ground to anchor our flowers, I looked around to see Xadrian across the road in the cemetery perched on the maintenance tractor in front the of the sheds trying to start up the tractor.

I figure Mom would have gotten a kick out of that.

I don't have a good photo yet of Mom's new headstone, but thought I'd add this anyway.  A few months earlier, Dad asked how we would feel about moving Mom's resting place up the hill a bit where standing headstones were allowed.  I was all for it.  It just seems right that Mom and Dad have a nicer headstone than one that was flush with the ground.

Alan, Dad and I met with the man who would design what we wanted for her.

It is near a tree further up the hill from Mark and Tina's with a beautiful view of Mount Timpanogas.

On Memorial Day weekend, Natasha called to see where Grandma Hunsaker was buried so she and Brian could take some flowers there.  She was surprised to see that the cemetery was full of Hunsakers, and that Kirk's ancestor had donated the land for it.  She messaged me this photo.

Ancestor Phineas Howe Young and Brother Joseph

A random discovery while listening to speaker Sharon Eubanks at BYU Women's Conference.  She was talking about loving and honoring our prophets.  She related this incident:

     Brigham Young's older brother Phineas Young was in Tiffin, Ohio, and while he was there he wrote to Willard Richards who was the prophet's secretary.  He said, "I long to see the day when I can again visit my brethren and see the Lord's prophet, and hear the words of life sweetly distilling from his lips.
     Give my love to the Prophet Joseph when you see him and tell him I'd come to the Rocky Mountains to see him and fight my way through an army of wildcats and Missouri wolves and  live on skunks the whole journey."
   

Brigham Young and His Brothers--Two of our Grandfathers!

Yes, people!  Two of Brigham's brothers are our great-great-great (or how many it is for you) grandfathers.  They are sitting on either side of Brigham.  Lorenzo Dow Young, a younger brother, and on his right, Phineas Howe Young an older brother.  Don't say it--- Phineas looks like a cross between Hitler and one of the three stooges.  Don't get me wrong, and I hope he will still claim me -- blame it on
the style back then.  In fact his face is quite nice if you disregard the hair factors.  And I am so thankful and feel so blessed to be their descendant.
Phineas was the brother who was first exposed to the Book of Mormon and knew right away it was the word of God.  He is the one who introduced Brigham to it.
The brothers took a very active role in the church's early days with the brethren.  Phineas was a close friend and brother-in-law to Oliver Cowdery.  Lorenzo was with Brigham crossing the plains and stayed back with him before they entered the Salt Lake Valley for the first time.  Google their names for some great histories of each of them.
More to follow......and I hope I'm not struck down for being disrespectful....just wanted to be silly with my kids and grandkids.  (If anyone ever reads this.)

My Bingham Family

This fall was a time of family history for me.  Besides working on the Book of Remembrance, I decided it was high time for me to finish up a project I began a few years ago.  My Uncle Carl, mother's  brother had a booklet of a history he had researched and compiled about Mom's grandfather, Calvin Perry Bingham (known as Perry).  He would have been Clara's father.  It was typed and printed up on a dot matrix printer that had faded grey type that wouldn't photo-copy well.  I asked Uncle Carl if I could borrow the history and retype it and get it printed for other family members.

I loved reading about ancestors I knew nothing about as well as my Grandma and Grandpa Young. The saving of files was a challenge as we had a couple of computer crashes, and a new pc and laptop.  The files were strewn between them all.  I finally got to the point when it was mostly done, and then I quit.  This fall when I decided I just had to get this done while Uncle Carl (who is 90 years old and weighs 90 pounds) is still alive.  Then I couldn't find the manuscript.  I searched high and low and knew or hoped I'd find it someday.  Then a few weeks before Christmas, its whereabouts came to me.  I quickly finished it up and got it to the printer. It isn't perfect.  My page numbering was off and I didn't have the whole manuscript on one computer.  Plus there were sheets that were clear enough not to need retyped.  So biting the perfectionist bullet - I did what I had to do to get it in print before Christmas and hand wrote corrections and page numbers. 

Because Grandma Young (Clara) lived until I was grown and married, I was able to know her fairly well.  This history has given me insights into her childhood and home life that I would have never known. I'll share some of them little by little as the blog goes on.

THE MOST MEMORABLE CHRISTMAS GIFT FROM MY DAD (and I got to help) !

Thanks to Gloria (Dad's second wife) and I believe, my mother orchestrating a little bit from heaven, Dad decided to give each of his kids a Book of Remembrance for Christmas this year.  He needed some help getting the information together and asked me to be a helper/liaison for Universal Genealogy Center.
Gloria had decided to give books to her children, and Dad had observed the meetings she had with the representative from the company in St. George.  He asked me to meet with him and see if it looked like something I thought my we would like.  Did it ever!!!
I gave Kevin Steadman the general information for our family and received the assignment to collect all the information for Dad's living posterity.  It was an assignment that was harder than I thought it would be.  My last information had been input on a computer that had crashed. Since then I had changed Family History software, so I had to find and re-enter the data.
To make it more interesting, I had changed to a Macbook (Apple product), so I was learning a new operating system, plus trying to get my software to work on it.  I had a bit of trouble saving the info to a thumb drive and going back and forth between computers.  It was finally pulled together after a couple of different setbacks.
When Kevin brought me sample book for my approval, I was overcome.  It was eight inches tall!  He said because all the family lines were pioneer lines with lots and lots of posterity, there was no family temple work to be done for the dead.  Just think!!! I have been feeling the hovering cloud of guilt every time we had a talk on doing temple work for your own ancestors.  That is not to say there isn't a LOT of things to do.  Updating my parents siblings info to begin with.
And so many, many ancestors to learn about.  There was one named Comyn the Red that Christian randomly saw.  He wanted to know why he was called The Red.  I googled him and up came tons of Scot history.  It was impressive.
We received CD's for each of the kids with all the info on it. 
WE WERE ALL SO THRILLED!

A MEMORABLE WEEK-- UNCLE LAMAR AND AUNT OLIVE FUNERALS

 Lyle LeGrand Young and his sons, Lawrence, Carl, (Lyle) Perry, and June

 Ruth Winchester Young, Lyle Young, Clara Young, June Young

 Olive and Lamar

In a collage of photos, a young Uncle LaMar and just below a photo of Kirk and I before we were married standing on Grandma Young's front porch in Altamont. 

 My cousins, the Nielsen boys, Leon, Larry, Keith, and Floyd now deceased.

 Lamar and Olive in their later years.

 I rotated this photo before I uploaded it (I thought)

 The young Nielsen family

 The three Young women -- Olive, Clara, and Lela

Happy days

The oldest of my mom's sibling, Aunt Olive Young Nielsen died five days after her husband, my Uncle LaMar passed away.  Kirk and I made the trip to Roosevelt twice in a week.  It was a most enjoyable experience which may seem weird of me to say.  They were both very old and suffering.  Their children and grandchildren had cared for them for a very long time.  They were more than ready to go.  I loved the tributes to both of them, and the opportunity to see my cousins, and other family members.  We stopped at the cemetery to photograph headstones of my Grandpa and Grandma Young and Uncle Perry Young.  I also snapped these photos with my phone from the display the family had at the funerals.