Expanding Our Foote Horizons

I began this blog almost 8 years ago.  During those 8 years I have managed several posts every month.  July 2015 has come to an end and I am barely squeaking in a post although it is a long one.

For over a year I have been on the organizing committee for a Foote Family Educational Conference to be held in Salt Lake City.  My uncle, Keith Foote Nyborg, asked my husband and I (both from Foote lines) if we would like to join him in bringing the Foote Family west for their bi-annual meeting.  The organization board members are mostly from the east and that is where they have usually met in the past.

This has been a labor of love for me and it has been fascinating to watch it all come together.  We secured a block of rooms at the Plaza Hotel in downtown Salt Lake City.  We knew that all The Days of 47 activities in honor of the first pioneers coming into the Salt Lake Valley would add to the fun so we scheduled our conference for July 23 - 26, 2015.  Many were coming with a great love for family history and the Family History Library was just steps from the Plaza.

The views of Temple Square were beautiful from the upper floors of the Plaza.  Footes from sixteen different states began to descend on Salt Lake City by Thursday afternoon.  We spent the evening getting to know one another.

The Days of 47 Parade was staged right on the corner of West Temple and South Temple where the Plaza Hotel was also located so parade watching was easy on Friday morning.

Those new to the parade thought it was wonderful.  This parade has been a pioneer tradition for over 85 years.

After the parade we loaded up two buses with Footes for a tour of the Salt Lake Valley.  This had been my major assignment and I researched and read and visited various locations in preparation for this tour.  I compiled a tour guide for added reading later with pictures of those we would talk about as well as interesting maps including the first early layout of Salt Lake City and the water shed of the Salt Lake Valley.  The tour guide book was a great hit with everyone and worth all the time it took to compile it.  Now I can check off "tour guide" on my bucket list although it really was never on my bucket list.

First bus tour stop was the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Museum at the top of Main Street near the State Capitol Building.  They hold an open house on Pioneer Day so we were also treated to wonderful eats and a strings band plus the wonderful collection of pioneer memorabilia including the buggy which brought Brigham Young into the Valley for the first time on July 24, 1847.

My granddaughters are churning some butter in front of this beautiful stained glass window honoring the pioneers.
 
After the museum the buses drove by the location of Timothy Bradley Foote's first property after he arrived in the Brigham Young Company in September 1848 located between 200 and 300 North and 500 and 600 West.  We then entered the I15 freeway on 600 North and headed south to the location of Union Fort just south of the I215 on Fort Union Blvd.

It is now just a monument in a one acre park in the center of a shopping complex parking lot, but this painting shows what it might have looked like after it was built in 1853.  Warren Foote, captain of a wagon train of 100, helped to build this fort and lived in this area after entering the Valley in 1850 as did his sister, Almira Ferguson, and the orphan children of his sister, Betsy Clement, who had died in Iowa. We enjoyed lunch at the Paradise Bakery on Fort Union Blvd. and then followed the Blvd. north to the entrance of Big Cottonwood Canyon seen in the middle background of the painting.

The buses took us all the way to the top of Big Cottonwood Canyon.  This is where the pioneers celebrated their 10 year anniversary of arriving in the Salt Lake Valley in 1857.  This monument honors that location.  Warren C. Foote and Darryl Foote, great grandsons of Warren Foote the pioneer, are standing by the monument.

 Many of the Footes also made the quick hike around Silver Lake just west of the monument.

The bus company told me that loading and unloading the buses would take a lot of our time.  Not my Footes!  They were on and off the buses in record time.  We made our way back down the canyon, to the I215, and then along Foothill Drive to "This is the Place" monument.  From the monument we headed west past Ft. Douglas, Rice Eccles Stadium where the 2002 Winter Olympic opening and closing ceremonies were held, and finally down South Temple past historic homes and buildings to the Plaza.

The Footes held their formal meeting and raffle that evening in the Aspen Room of the Plaza.

Early Saturday morning we were off for a walking tour of Temple Square and other important places.

Those from back east kept commenting on the beautiful gardens.

I learned a few things myself.  Those "marble" columns in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building are actually wood and faux painted to look like marble.

We walked into the Tabernacle just in time to hear the pin drop.

Then it was back to the Plaza for a presentation on the use of familysearch.org before going to the Family History Library for some hands on work of family history.

There is my hubby next to the wall and my son, Eric, in the blue shirt.

On the back row were my husband's cousins.  Remember, we are both descended through the Foote line from David Foote and Irene Lane.  I guess they are my cousins, too!  My husband Glen descends through David's and Irene's daughter Betsy Clement.  I descend through David's and Irene's son Warren Foote.

Later that afternoon we met at the Church Historical Library to view the journals of Warren Foote.

They had been brought out of storage for our viewing.  There were three journals and the emigration log of the Warren Foote Company which arrived in Salt Lake in 1850.

There were pictures of Warren, his wife Artemisia Sidnie, and his children in one of his record books.

He also kept two record books of his ancestors and descendants and his temple work.

Warren's hand writing was beautiful and clear.

This is a picture of Warren (on left) and his brother, David, who came by train from Michigan to meet his brother in Salt Lake in 1888.

Once again there was a large group gathered together for this once in a lifetime experience.

Because my husband and I are related, we named our middle son David Foote in honor of our common ancestor.  He in turn has named his son, Warren Foote.  The names of David and Warren seem to pass back and forth through the generations.

Warren C. Foote, grandson of David Foote , son of Warren Foote, also stood with my son and grandson with these special names.

Warren C. Foote also spoke to us about our heritage.  As he has read through Warren's Journals,  now available to all of us by CD and printed copy and soon to be digitized, he has found a common theme of belief in God, support of our country and its founding principals, and the importance of family.

When Warren finished everyone came forward to view these priceless articles more closely.  They generously let my grandchildren come forward first.

The beginning of Warren Foote's autobiography.

This was a man who experienced most of early church history and was generous enough to write about it for those who would follow.

My youngest son and his family out in the hallway.  I am so glad that three of my children and their spouses and children were able to come see the original journals.  Warren includes his testimony and desires for his posterity in his journals.

Terryl Givens who is a Professor of Literature and Religion, and the James A. Bostwick Professor of English at the University of Richmond, was our banquet speaker on Saturday night.  He is also a descendant of David Foote and Irene Lane through their daughter, Melinda.  His remarks were the perfect capstone to our Foote events.  The banquet was held in the Energy Solutions Arena where we enjoyed a festive Western Barbeque complete with red gingham tablecloths and complimentary bandannas.  I am so glad that my son, Eric, managed a selfie.

After the banquet we entered the arena for the Days of 47 Rodeo.

There were even trained bison.  Yes,  trained bison who would eventually climb and stand on top of their trailer.

On Sunday morning, the official finish of our Foote Family Event was held in the Conference Center as we watched the Mormon Tabernacle Choir as they presented their Sunday morning broadcast of "Music and the Spoken Word."  It was lovely!

Once outside everyone began to line up.

We felt it was important to capture the final moments of our family conference with a group picture.  It was truly a memorable experience and one that I am grateful to have had.

World War II Women with different perspectives

I found these two books at my local library.  World War II seems to the subject matter in a number of books recently including Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand and All the Light We Can Not See by Anthony Doerr.  I found these two very interesting because they were told from the viewpoint of women.  A World Elsewhere - An American Woman in Wartime Germany by Sigrid MacRae and G I Brides - The Wartime Girls Who Crossed the Atlantic for Love by Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi were both fascinating as we are introduced to the stories of women who marry those other than their country men for love but find adjustments to another country and culture more difficult than imagined especially when related to war.

A World Elsewhere is written by a woman who never met her father as he died while her mother was pregnant with her.  At her mother's death she is made aware of letters written by her father and papers which tell a broader story of both her mother and her father.  It is need to know her father which causes Sigrid MacRae to dig deeper into the unique marriage of a German Baron and an American girl from Hartford, Connecticut who meet in Paris, marry in Germany, and raise a family of six on a farm north of Berlin as Hitler comes to power.  The author begins with childhoods lived and follows a relationship formed and the family which follows.  As so often happens in life, time and chance change and even destroy expectations.  War brings great hardships and tragedy.  The reader experiences WWII through the eyes of an American living in Germany with six children considered as Germans and in wars aftermath the struggle to bring her family back to the United States.  This book brings to light a whole new perspective of what it was to have lived during WWII.

Did you know that there were 70,000 GI Brides who followed their men back to the United States at the end of WWII?  G I Brides follows in detail the stories of four women from Great Britain who meet an American soldier, fall in love, and follow them back to their hometowns.  The storytelling is real as are the locations and not all is happiness.  There are families, especially mothers, to win over; cultural expectations to meet; war trauma to deal with in their spouses; and homesickness to overcome.  I really liked the intimate sharing of what life was like in England during war time and well as each unique love story.  I despaired with the women as they went about getting their paper work in place and securing passage to the United States some toting along toddlers and babies as well.  Once again, a unique experience shared by women in war time.

My own life as been enriched by the war time stories of my mother who was in the Women's Army Air Corp  ( a WAC) during WWII.  She sang us marching ditties, showed us pictures, and told us stories.  We held her dog tags and read newspaper articles saved.  Her time was spent as a nurse in Oakland, California working in a hospital serving the wounded of the Pacific Theater.  I am grateful for the war time experience of a woman who I also knew personally.

Brigham Young read-a-thon

My photo of a photograph in the Fairview Museum of a younger Brigham Young

During 2013 I have served as a gospel doctrine teacher (Sunday School) in my LDS congregation one Sunday per month.  Our course of study has been the Doctrine & Covenants which has included a great deal of LDS Church history.  I have really enjoyed the church history part.  I have had a great affinity for history in general but in particular church history for many years.  This year I have been delving even deeper as I have prepared my lessons.

The last month or so I have been reading about Brigham Young, 2nd president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Ten of Brigham Young's daughters know as "The Big Ten"

He would receive world wide attention because of his many wives and 50+ children.  He would go down in history as the leader of the largest organized immigration movement in the world and the premiere colonizer of the American West.

 

Photo of Brigham Young (middle in top hat) on his trip to the confluence of the Virgin and Colorado Rivers in early 1870's, the farthest south that he traveled

Brigham Young first traveled to the Salt Lake Valley in 1847.  He returned to Iowa later that same year, then came west again leading many others in 1848.  He never returned that far east again, even with the advent of the Intercontinental Railroad.  The Great Basin became his home, his project, and still bears his imprint.

Brigham Young, American Moses by Leonard J. Arrington, was first published in 1986.  It is a very detailed biography of Brigham Young as a young man, church convert, church leader, government leader, organizer and planner, and family man.  Under his leadership and lifetime over 80,000 people came to live in the Great Basin in over 350 communities.

He was born in Whitingham, Vermont to a newly arrived and struggling family including a mother with consumption (tuberculosis).  They traveled on to the backwoods of Upper New York State where hard labor was the rule, shoes were only worn to church, and education came in small doses.  Brigham Young claimed to have had only 11 days of formal schooling.  But his was a Bible reading family and a religious family of whom all eventually joined this new religion.  His mother dies when Brigham is a young teen and life becomes even harder.  His scrappiness allows him to continue on, to learn the trade of carpenter and glazier for which he became well known, and to survive the death of his first young wife from the same disease which had taken his mother.

I also read Brigham Young, A Concise Biography of the Mormon Moses by Ed Breslin which was published this year.  It is concise and the beginning is taken almost word for word from Arrington's biography.  His is also the perspective of an Eastener looking back on this time period in the West.

I also read much of Brigham Young, The Colonizer by Milton R. Hunter which is in my library as part of the books I received of my mother's.  It was first published in the early 1940's and was the doctrinal thesis of Hunter.  It contains good, solid church history of this period as well as a detailed telling of the colonization of the Great Basin year by year and location by location.  It is said that you will find a Mormon community where a good creek or river leaves the mountains.  As one drives the highways and byways of the western states they will pass through these communities including the Mormon Corridor along which Interstate 15 now travels.

Brigham Young statue in front of the Administration Building on the Brigham Young University Campus

He was a self-taught man, an intelligent man, and a man who did not shirk from giving advice.  He was also known for his kindness to the poor and the struggling and his contempt for those who might take advantage of others.  He and his best friend, Heber C. Kinball, would travel to the mouth of Emmigration Canyon to welcome the annual groups immigrating to the Great Basin.  His influence had brought them there and he had a plan for their survival in the arid American West.

Books with a WWI time frame

When I packed for my Kansas trip, I included two books just picked up from the library.  At the time I did not know that the National World War I Museum would be a part of the itinerary.  I had requested Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey by The Countess of Carnarvon back in March.  Having jumped on the Downton Abbey fan club train, I knew this book would tell the story of the real people who inhabited Highclere Castle which is where Downton Abbey was filmed.  I knew that the time period of WWI would be included.

I found the story of Lady Almina, her family, and friends to be much more interesting than the characters of Downton Abbey.  The time frame of the book is 1895 to World War II so the reader gains a better understanding of life in prewar England as well as how much that life changed after the war including the reasons for the second war just a generation later.

The real people of Downton Abbey make unlikely marriages, spend lots of money, go on archaeological digs in Egypt, do charity work, and have fancy house parties.  Why, that sounds like the characters in Downton Abbey except for the digging part.  Maybe they'll get to that in Season 3.
 

I requested The Shoemaker's Wife from the library because I am a Adriana Trigiani fan.  I did not know that it would be about the same time period.  It is fiction based on Adriana Trigiani's own family history and those who immigrated from Italy to the United States.  The main characters, the eventual shoemaker's wife and the shoemaker, come from the mountains of northern Italy which border the Alps of Austria.  Though not from the same village, they meet as teenagers one time, then randomly over time after immigrating to New Jersey and New York.  It's an epic story including much history but more important, it is a love story.  The shoemaker fights in the trenches of France in WWI and by doing so gains his US citizenship, but the lasting effects of the mustard gas bring grief and tragedy in the end.

When I arrived home, I had a message telling me that The Cove by Ron Rash was available for pick up.  I had read a review and it had sounded interesting.  Not only was the main character named Laurel but once again the time is WWI but now we are in the mountains of western North Carolina.  Laurel and her brother Hank Shelton are the only survivors of their family and live on the family farm deep in a cove with gigantic granite outcroppings blocking the sun.  Hank has returned from serving in WWI with one less arm.  Laurel is treated badly due to a birthmark and many of the locals fear her.  Their lives seem to improve with the arrival of a mysterious stranger who can not speak.  He helps Hank with restoring the farm and wins Laurel's heart.  This book is beautifully written, almost poetic in nature, and the storyline will break your own heart.  You will feel it coming, but will blindly hope that it might end well.

It was interesting that I had selected three books representing three different cultures and countries during the time period of WWI while also having the opportunity to visit the WWI Museum.