Great-Great Grandmother Myler and Tithing Blessings

My great great grandmother Ann Mariah (Pronounced MARIAHR) Thacker had been married to Joseph Myler for six years when he told her he wanted to take a plural wife, and she gave consent. After the marriage she was heart broken and she threw mud at them as they drove away in a buggy. 8 months after the marriage she took her three children and went back to Daniels to be with her family. One time when living in living in Strawberry, she took 3 dozen eggs to Bishop Clarence Ivie to pay her tithing. While talking to him, she told him she didn’t know if she should pay her tithing because she needed to buy flannel to make petticoats. Bishop Ivie told her to pay her tithing, and she would have the flannel to make the petticoats. She paid her tithing and left. While walking home she found a package in the middle of the road at the old Strawberry river bridge. She opened the package and there was the flannel she needed for her petticoats. She went back to the Bishop and told him what had happened. She went along the river and asked everyone she could find if they had lost the package. No one claimed the flannel so it was hers, and she had her petticoats. She had walked about 10 miles that day.

Poem for Pioneer Day

Mormon Pioneers, originally uploaded by AllAboutMormons.com.

COUNTERPARTS by Susan Noyes Anderson

Great Grandma walked across the plains,
Her blue dress grey with travel stains,
She bore the hardship, for she knew
Her faith in the Lord would see her through.

Her once pink hands were calloused now,
And she had said good-bye somehow
To husband dear and children lost,
Praying the end would be worth the cost.

I walk the darkened city street,
My hurried footsteps keeping beat
With a trembling heart, but I swallow my fear.
Reminding myself that the Lord is near.

I wear my travel stains deep inside,
Where I battle iniquity's rising tide,
Praying husband and children will not be lost';
And that the end will be worth the cost;

We all must walk these earthly miles;
Different times bring different trials.
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Used this in the talk I gave in church today "Remembering our Heritage.

My Thoughts on "Genealogy Meets the Blogsphere"

On July 14, 2011 there was a front page article called "Genealogy Meets the Blogsphere" on Mormon Times in the Deseret News.  One interesting point:  GeneaBloggers.com has a listing of 2,000 genealogy and family history blogs.   It's quite mind boggling. It seems the internet is exploding with tutorials, networking, and sharing of information regarding new trends and resources connected to the world of family history.
The article points out  places where one can watch videos on how to make a genealogy blog.  Even though I have been quite remiss in making frequent postings, I am so glad I met the challenge issued  last year in Web 2.0, 23 things.....embracing lifelong learning in the family history field.
It was fun for me to realize I was actually pro-active about something that was becoming a trend.
There is so much more to do than I can ever get done, but I want to post more frequently....even if it is just for myself.  Also I am trying to be selective in how I spend my time with Fam. Hist.  I have to keep up to date to be able to teach the Family History class in Sunday School, am trying to organize materials I already have in my possession, and want to pinpoint some incidents and qualities of grandparents and great grandparents and get them recorded in one source.
Kirk and I are speaking on the 24th in church:  Remembering our Heritage and Honoring our Heritage.
Loving and appreciating our ancestors more each day.  The spirit of Elijah has definitely settled upon me.

Brigham Young's Summer Home

We went to St. George on Spring Break.  The one thing I most wanted to do was visit Brigham Young's summer home, as I never had.  Kirk and I went one afternoon.  This portrait was hanging in the home.  Toward the end of his life, he stayed in St. George.  He had a lot of problems with his feet (not sure if hips and back were also involved.)  Anyway when he had an addition built onto the main home, he had his bedroom on the second made large enough so that he had an office and a dining table in it.  At times in order to get upstairs to his room, two men would carry him in a chair up the stairs.  There was a balcony outside his room so that he could spend time sitting there.  At times he would visit with people from there.

His bed was a tall four poster.  Most interesting item there to me was an upholstered stool next to it for him to kneel on to pray.

My relation to him --- his 3rd great niece.  Two of his brothers, my 3rd great grandfathers -- Lorenzo Dow Young and Phineas Howe Young.

Xadrian visits Grandma Hunny at work

Xadrian visits Grandma Hunny at work, originally uploaded by hunnygrams.

A Family History Pioneer

As I spend some of my evenings working on indexing records online for FamilySearch, I often think of my mother-in-law, Vera. Other times I am sorting through boxes of photos and family papers, dividing and filing them into categories so they can be more easily accessed. I ran across some information that made me realize that Vera was indeed a forerunner to the online indexing program.

Vera Cook Hunsaker was called on a mission by President Spencer W. Kimball. This mission was "not to be more than three years and to be served in the Family History Department of the Church. Seventeen years later she was released from this mission.

The assignment she was working on was called INDEXING/SPECIAL PROJECTS UNIT.

The following is an excerpt from Evan Evans, supervisor of the unit helping to bring this to pass.

"The volunteers who have worked on the Welsh-will project....produced such an impressive sample of the quality and volume of the work that Volunteers can accomplish, that 40 volumes of Welsh-will abstracts together with a five-way index for each volume, were recognized in 1976 by the Priesthood Genealogy Division....which was later included in a presentation given to the General Authorities.

"...The following year a special new unit was organized in the Genealogical Department consisting of volunteers with one full-time employee....

"The groups of volunteers working on the We;sh-will project were supervised by Sister Vera Hunsaker, whose capabilities, dedication, and countless hours of work were largely instrumental in bringing this to pass.

"This...set a precedent at the department...and was the forerunner of the "explosion" of volunteer work that is beginning and will transpire in the future."

Along with her service in the church, Vera had deep closet shelves filled from floor to ceiling with pedigree charts and family group sheets she had researched in her life.

We love and miss her!