Family Tradition

Lucy

"Hey, Kids!
Have I ever told you about the diamond clip?"

Opa and I had a Conference Party and I decided to teach a little family history lesson.

June and Gerald Bagley Wedding
April 1, 1946

"Sixty-six years ago my mom and dad got married. At the wedding breakfast my grampa gave a tribute to his new daughter-in-law. He said he had a special wedding present for her, something that had been in the family for years: a diamond clip.

"Then he gave her a black velvet box. Thrilled, she opened the little box and found . . .

a dime and clip."

(It was April Fool's Day!)

They lived happily ever after anyway.

(Pass on a story about your parents to somebody. Create a tradition!)

Hearts Turned

PJ May 2011

Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, the present and the future.

Opa May 2011

My favorite scripture is a prophesy in the last verse of the Old Testament:
"And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children,
and the heart of the children to their fathers . . ."
It's happened to me.

Our kids 1984

They won my heart when they were little,
and their kids have turned my heart all over again.
Listen in on some kidspeak from tonight:

Scott, Eliza, Jill

"Tickle us some more, Uncle Sco."
"I can't, girls. I'm old."

"But we're young!"

Marty 1965

I love having the memory of being young,


Marty, May 2011

and the perspective of being old.
It fills me with gratitude.

Today my heart is turned to the fathers who kept my world turning:

Wells, 1943

Dee's dad in England,

Jiggs, 1943

And my dad in Australia.

I wonder if all the soldiers realized the lives they were blessing.

"Think of the power of thousands of prayers of parents and grandparents,
back and back and even beyond, all requesting essentially the same thing:
'Bless my children; bless my children; bless my children.'
Can you hear it as it rolls and echos throughout all eternity?"
—John H. Groberg

My heart is turning in both directions:
Bless my children; bless my fathers.
And bless me to be worthy of them all.

♥♥♥

Who are you remembering this Memorial Day?

Where Does Your Story Take Place?

Portaferry, Northern Ireland

Setting is where a story takes place.


Ferry Street, Portaferry

Mary Mullin lived on Ferry Street, in 1820.

Portaferry Castle

This was her view in one direction.

Yellow gorse on hillside, Portaferry

This was her view in the other direction.


The neighbors lived here,


Or here,


The Square, Portaferry

And here's where she shopped on Saturdays.

Could there be a more picturesque setting for a life? Sheep in the meadows, cows in the corn, cobblestones, fog horns, waves slapping the rocks—but Mary probably didn't think her village was unique or charming. It was familiar. Maybe she was bored. Would she have dreamed her descendants would travel thousands of miles just to see where she lived?

Mary's daughters, seven greats later.

Their lives would have seemed exotic to her,



Even though, they live by the ocean, too.

But this is where they go on Saturdays,

And bored is spelled board for the modern Mullins.


Marty's house at 2025 Twin View Drive

Our recent trip to Europe was all about setting. In London, Ireland, and Vienna we noticed details to include in upcoming books: architecture, colors, neighborhoods, scenery. It occurred to me that where I grew up would be just as unique to someone from somewhere else.

Dee's house in Provo

Subdivisions and suburbs tell different stories than apartments and row houses.
They tell my story.

Mount Olympus, Salt Lake City

Mountains, canyons, deserts and snow—that's what's familiar to me.

Think about your childhood bedroom. Picture your backyard. Take a mental stroll through your first home. This is where the first chapter of your story takes place. Recall details with all five senses: the way the furnace smelled the first time it went on in the winter; the way the couch itched your bare legs while you watched Fury on Saturday morning; the wind rattling the screen above the bathtub; how paregoric tasted when you had an ear-ache; the flowered wallpaper on your mom's bedroom ceiling that matched her drapes and dust ruffle.

Settings are more than just the way things appear—they comprise values and traditions, attitudes and behavior. In case your 7th great-granddaughters are interested in you, make it a little easier for them. Was your house cozy, messy, smelly? Were you proud of it or embarrassed by it? Did the decor reflect the times? Write the details into your story.

"More than just compiling names, true family history is about saving people from obscurity. Names are important in genealogical research, but knowledge of the historic context in which our ancestors lived, the details of their lives, and the experiences that shaped their personalities are essential to our understanding of ourselves. In researching family, we're really researching ourselves."

What are five words that describe the setting for your story?

Irish Immigration

Portaferry, Northern Ireland

In the 1800s all of Ireland was part of Great Britain. English barons owned the land and allowed Irish tenant farmers to live in small huts on their land and grow food, most of which they gave back to the landlord for rent. When the landlords decided they could make more money raising cattle and sheep, they evicted the tenants, tore down the huts, and sent the excess food to Europe for a good profit. Starving children watched ships leaving the ports loaded with food, while they were eating grass to survive.

Highways filled with farmers and their families, wandering aimlessly about begging for food just to keep alive. They lived almost exclusively on potatoes. In 1845 a fungus known as blight caused the potato plants to rot in the ground, giving off an appalling stench—the whole countryside smelled foul. By early autumn famine was imminent, not because there was no food—there was plenty of wheat, meat, and cheese—but because the peasants had no money, and no way to earn it. To add to the misery, that winter was the harshest in living memory.


One and a half million people died of starvation and disease in The Great Famine, and waves of immigrants fled Ireland. Never before had the world witnessed such an exodus; a million people sailed across the Atlantic in leaky, overcrowded ships to Canada and the United States.

Ferry Street, Portaferry

We went to Portaferry in Northern Ireland to trace one of them: James Mullin. Back in the day, local public records were sent to offices in Dublin for safe-keeping, but those buildings were destroyed in the rebellion of 1922. Now the information available is from diaries and letters sent back home by immigrants; the history of Irish immigration was hidden in attics and basements.

Portaferry librarians

One man's garbage is another man's treasure. Luckily, Portaferry historians collected and organized some of the local records. Two of them were expecting us, and pulled out a box.


We could visualize the experience of James and his family by reading letters and journals written by others at the same time, in similar circumstances. Twenty-year-old Hugh Quinn was about the same age when he left Portaferry within a few months of James. This is from a letter he wrote:


Tuesday, September 9, 1847

Dearest Honored Mother,
The wind so long looked for is at hand, and I’m ready to leave Portaferry. I dread as death the moment of my separation from you.



He wrote this in his diary that same day:

I found myself surrounded by my mother and sisters, having my coat buttoned, unbuttoned and buttoned again by each of them. The walking stick fell from my trembling hand and was handed to me by little Alice. I could not move from the spot nor could I get out a word. I turned hastily from my mother to hide my swelling tears. ‘It will be forever,’ I said. ‘It is still not yet too late,’ she said. ‘Stay at home.’ I looked back through my tears to see my little brother crying on the dock, and I stepped onto the boat.

Axel Lundgren 1913

My grandpa left Sweden at seventeen, and it was forever. Like James Mullin, he married, had children, made a life in a new land and never returned.

I can't imagine what it was like for the mothers.

Searching for Puritan Ancestors

When my great-grandpa Anthony Colby arrived in Salem, Massachussetts on April 8, 1630, nobody stamped his passport. He was undocumented. Did anybody keep track of folks in those days?

I went underground as a sleuth in London, England to find out.

Forty five minutes outside the city is a town called Kew.
I followed my leader down the road and arrived at . . .

The British National Archives.

Great-grandpa Colby wouldn't have been admitted. It took a passport and two forms of ID to get through the door. They took my photo at the entrance, and matched it to my face when I got to the desk inside, where they took my official photo.

Security was tighter than the airport. Bags, purses, coats, notebooks and pens had to be stowed in lockers. I carried my camera, magnifying glass, a loose piece of paper and a #2 graphite pencil (without an eraser) in a clear plastic bag to get my readers card.

The room reminded me of the DMV. There were several computers and I waited my turn, then took a short on-line course about how to handle old documents (which I skimmed) followed by a short on-line quiz (which I flunked.) I returned to the course, passed the quiz and qualified for a card, which unlocked the gates to each library room—where they searched my plastic bag each time I went in or out. It was starting to seem like a big deal.

I was glad I'd done my homework. This wasn't the LDS Family History Library: no sweet missionaries hovering around with smiles and helpful tips. These were serious historians who expected me to know preliminary facts, speaking with accents and vocabulary I could barely understand. After a little research I requested "a bundle."

There were 5,000 bundles of documents stored in damp, vermin-infested warehouses on London docks for hundreds of years. They were consolidated in one building in 1883 and moved to this new facility in 1997, but by then many had deteriorated or been eaten by rats. Just 1,450 survived, and one of them had my name on it.

Luckily, I'd just completed a course on how to unwrap my bundle.

I put on my white cotton gloves and examined the sheepskin binding.

It slowly dawned on me that I was looking at the actual record.

The pages were of vellum and parchment.

The writing was beautiful and undecipherable.

Several years worth of ship's records were bound together in the same book,
and I could read the dates and recognize a few words here and there.

And I discovered that yes, somebody was keeping track of folks in those days.
There was the record of Anthony's ship, the Confidence.

Pleased to meet you, Grandpa Colby.