Category: Family History

Pioneer Day 2022

“Happy day! All is well! All is well!

Thanks to our pioneer rich family history we have the stories of the lives of early members of the church. The stories found in the lives of these people bear records of their faithfulness and testimony. Look around on this blog and you will find some pretty amazing accounts of their conversion and travels based on these testimonies.

One, in particular, I want to share with you today is that of David Wood. Family Search record number KWJW-3L2

Here is how you are connected to David Wood:

In this case, David is your 4th great grandfather.

Check out where he was born!

One of his daughters, Margaret, tells a little bit about her father. But even Margaret has some information about her life that ties us to the Prophet Joseph Smith. Check this out!!

David Wood was a carpenter and cabinet maker?! He made wood carvings that are in the Kirtland temple! The whole family was at the dedication of the Kirtland temple. How cool is that?

David and his wife, Catherine were sealed in the Nauvoo temple on 2 February, 1846.

They traveled west in Morris Phelps Company called the Garden Grove Company.

Their daughter, Elizabeth Agness Wood, married Benjamin Mark Smith in American Fork, Utah in 1855.

Another of David and Catherine’s daughters, Sarah Ann Wood, was sealed to Hiram Oaks – Dallin H. Oaks great-grandparents. That’s how we’re related to Dallin Oaks.

David is buried in Midway cemetery with Catherine.

There is so much more to read about David and Catherine Wood. Imagine the courage it took to leave their home in Canada to follow their faith to Kirtland and Nauvoo and later to Utah. These people share their testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ in their actions.

For Pioneer Day, I encourage you to read about David Wood and other family members of that day. See how many of our relatives came to Nauvoo and then on to Utah to live and build a life around the gospel we love so dearly.

All of us are pioneers in our own ways. Remember that our posterity who will be born hundreds of years after us. They will look at our names, histories, and pictures in their version of Family Search and wonder how we affected their lives from so long ago.

Make it easy for them to learn about you. Put a memory or a photo or a written text about you in your Family Search record today. Tell them how you pioneered your way in 2022. They will thank you for it!

I love you guys!

Family History

Retta Marries Tracy

Excerpted from Retta Graham’s personal journal.

Tracy Jacob Smith [1894-1935] is my father’s father. There is very little known about him except for what my grandmother, Retta Graham, wrote in her journal.

Tracy was a war veteran, a farmer, and a mine engineer. He was a father of five.

He died of pneumonia in March of 1935.

I hope you enjoy reading this story of how my Grandmother Retta and Grandfather Tracy got together.

[Transcribed from Retta’s journal, written in her own hand, in the late 1970s. No care was taken to correct spelling or grammar. Here she describes her meeting and marrying Tracy Smith]

[In 1916] There were not many families lives in Midview [Utah] but one of the most important families was the C. W. Smith [KWCY-PKT] family. They were a large family and one of the first families in Midview. When they first moved out to Midview there was no school for the kids. They had to go to Vernal for the school year.

The two older Smith boys, Tracy [KWCR-DK7] & Charlie [KW8N-ZWS] carried the mail to Red Cap and Midview from Duchesne. They used a white top buggy for that purpose and Wilma, Iretta, and me used to watch for that white top buggy to appear over the hill and then two of us used to dash over the hill to Burgeners, the Bishop & Postmaster and we would wait for the mail to be distributed and wait for Tracy or Charley to ask us to ride up the hill.

Tracy was seven years older than me, but I felt like he was the one for me.

On April 1st [April 6, 1917] World War was declared and Tracy went to the service (Navy). He had been in the service and was in reserve so when war was declared he had to go back.

I really felt so bad to see him go. He wrote to me every week. He was stationed at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands.

[In 1917] I went to Lehi to go to school and also to help my Uncle T. J. [Thomas Joseph Peck, [KWVH-GS1] who was sick with a heart condition. He had to be sent from his mission in Leeds, England after serving just nine months. So my uncle, my grandmother, and myself lived to-gether that winter. I was just 15 years old then.

[In 1918] When I was 16 yrs old he [Tracy] sent me a ring and asked me to wait for him. I went home from Lehi that summer and got a job working for Mrs. Phillips. Her husband had a clothing store. I will never forget the new coat I bought from the Phillipps store. He wasn’t fair to me.

He [Mr. Phillips] charged me $45.00 for the coat and was only paying me $3.00 a week for doing house work, taking care of their 3 girls, and anything there was to do in the house. When I think of those things now it makes me really vexed to think of the way they just put it over us with their cheap wages yet couldn’t cut down on the price of merchandise.

I was with that family for over a year. In the mean time Tracy sent me an engagement ring from Honolulu.

I did go out with boy friends and had a lot of good friends, both boys and girls but I knew Tracy was the one I wanted.

He came home from Pearl Harbor a day or two before Christmas in 1919.

We were married Feb 17, 1920 and lived over to Roosevelt at first.

Tags Family, genealogy

Family History

Dear Santa

You don’t expect a person you remember only as an adult to also have had a childhood. Below is an exhibit that my mother, Mildred Mitchell Smith, really was a child.

Here is a letter she was sending to Santa when she was about 9 1/2 years old.

Notice the penmanship. She has some nice details in the first letter I. Her capital Cs are sort of fancy too. I can tell you, her signature improved quite a bit over time.

Her desires were simple — even for 1923! Well, she does ask for a BIG baby doll.

I love this woman with all of my heart.

Tags Mildred

Family History

Lydia Alexander Smith

Lydia Alexander Smith is a Smith family early Latter Day Saint ancestors. Her story is typical of many Latter Day Saint women, until we learn about the circumstances of her death.

Lydia married Warren Smith in 1826. Our genealogy shows them married in Quincy, Illinois and their children being born in Nashville, Tennessee. The recorded marriage location is pretty much an impossibility. Unless they were “living in sin”, it is pretty likely they were married in Davidson or Nashville Tennessee and the Quincy, Illinois location is in error.

Tucked between popular Church history chapters about Liberty Jail and Nauvoo is a little-known but vitally important chapter dealing with the Latter-day Saints’ seven-month struggle to survive the winter of 1838–39 in Missouri and to leave there by spring 1839. Triggered by Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs’s October 1838 extermination order against them, some ten thousand Saints engaged in a mass exodus, many going to Quincy, Illinois. It was difficult, dramatic, sometimes harrowing, and only partly organized. Their tough experiences produced definite impacts—both short- and long-term—on Missouri and Illinois, on the course of the Church, and on individual members.

According to one of Lydia’s descendants, Jay Eldon Smith, “Lydia [Lydia Alexander Smith] joined the church and moved to Missouri [with her husband, Warren Smith, and five children – all under nine years old,] during the intense persecution of the Saints in that state.”

Lydia and her family made the 170 mile-long trek from Far West to Illinois during the winter of 1938 – 1839. Eventually 12,000 saints lined the shores of the Mississippi River, on both the Iowa and Illinois sides.

Extracted from their homes and traveling from Far West, Missouri, the exiles lived in tents and dugouts and subsisted mainly on corn. Sickness and disease due to exposure took a heavy toll, while they awaited settlement in Illinois.

Lydia was one who succumbed to exposure in February 1839, on the west bank of the Mississippi river waiting to cross to Quincy, Illinois. This was just a few short months before the settlement of Nauvoo in the summer of 1839.

Although our records indicate Lydia was buried in Montrose, Missouri, it seems more likely she was buried in Montrose, Iowa, just across the river from Nauvoo.

Lydia was only 29 years old.

Warren Smith, became a widower with five children — one boy was only two months old. Warren continued across the Mississippi river to the area known as Commerce City, later known as Nauvoo.

Tags Family, genealogy, pioneers, Smith

Family History

Who’s Milt-tred?

This is a case of someone writing the way things sound. Milderd? Really? By the way, here’s the correct lineup: Back Row (L to R) – Roger Corey (Pat’s husband), Patricia Halterman Corey, Robert Halterman, Keith Halterman. Middle Row (L to R) – Nanette Halterman Pond, Mildred Mitchell Halterman Smith, Jacqueline Halterman (Keith’s wife). Front Row: Guy Smith.

This photo was taken after the funeral of Mildred Smith’s sister Maude Mitchell Halterman on Monday, September 28, 1964. It was taken out in front of “Aunt Libbie’s” house.

On that day, Mildred, my mother, was experiencing waves of grief from the loss of her sister. I remember that day being pretty fun. I enjoyed getting the attention of the older relatives. They would pat me on the head and say, “Oh what a handsome young man.”

Here’s a link to Maude’s obituary from the October 1, 1964 Iron County Record.