Claiming the Legendary Teapot and Colander

There's a story circulating for some time now picked up by Stake Pioneer Trek websites about an elderly woman who walked all the way to Salt Lake City in 1856 with a teapot and colander tied to her apron strings. There was a strict weight limit for personal items in the handcarts. This woman found a way around that. Another woman in the first company carried a hat box, but she died along the way. These stories were recounted in the Ensign of July 2000. However, in the Ensign, the teapot is covered by ellipses.

With some pretty good circumstantial evidence, I am prepared to claim the woman with the teapot and colander as our ancestress, Elinor Jenkins Vaughan. I think I know who the lady with the hat box was too.

Picture of Elder Edmund Ellsworth from 1855

Maybe other history seekers have seen this, but I'm still an amateur and find it AMAZING! I've seen a lot of mission conference pictures. There are some from Brazil that have me in them. This has historical significance as this 1855 photo of British Missionaries includes the captains of four of the five experimental handcart companies of 1856. Three of the experiments came out pretty well. The last two, not so much. And those last two captains are all the more famous for that.

Our Visit to Elinor's Birthplace

This is from my other blog about our visit to Elinor Jenkins Vaughan's birthplace in 2010. Written before we discovered that she was our first Vaughan in Utah, it should be shared here:

Back this morning from the Bountiful Temple having done Initiatory work for family names I found last week, I was regretting not visiting all the villages connected to our ancestors on our trip two years ago. Then I remembered to be grateful for the amazing experiences we did have, truly led by the Lord not knowing beforehand.

We had intended to visit Stowe Farm where our Jenkins Ancestress Elinor originated, wife of John Vaughan married 1810 in Hay, Breconshire, Wales. We knew from the 1851 Census she had been born in "Stow" a fairly common place name throughout England also spelled as "Stowe." Some on ancestral file had placed her birth in a "Stowe" in Shropshire, but we thought that a bit far off. On old maps of Herefordshire, we found Stow as a part of Whitney Parish within walking distance of Hay across the Welsh border. And we found a matching Jenkins Family with a daughter Elinor in Whitney Parish records.

So we were off to visit Stowe. Knowing it was a private farm, I was hoping to find someone who could give us permission to take some pictures. From my trip journal:

Unbroken Chain of Vaughan Sealing 1789-2014

Just back from the Mt. Timpanogos Temple where I was privileged to be proxy for my grandfather as his four children were sealed to him and my grandmother. The Doctrine of the Temple is that we seek priesthood power and authority to perform ordinances that bind and seal so that the Atonement of Jesus Christ can heal all wounds and make us one.

Order in All Things - More Discoveries in Glasbury

Cottage at Heol-y-gaer by the lane heading west towards Glasbury.

© Copyright Jonathan Billinger and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

It was a very late night as I was excited to find two documents each relating to two people in our family history. And they helped confirm the location of where one of our ancestors lived in a home that still appears to still exists in Glasbury, Wales.

This morning, we went to the Bountiful Temple after late arising and parked near the opening to the underground lot so we could get in easily in the snowfall. My wife had a couple of family names for initiatory and I went to work at the veil. It's not hard work. It is interesting that with all the "priestly class," men and women performing ordinances in the temple, there is no monetary pay. We do pay the custodians as well as the cafeteria and laundry workers. That's how the whole world should work.

Grandpa George's Gay Way in Fruitland

[Family! We need more blog pieces - maybe more modern stories. This one is from my other blog dated January 27, 2013]:

This posting is not what you think from the title.

Having my piece on Nyssa, Oregon, the Amalgamated Sugar Co., and the maternal side of my family published at Keepapitchinin.org, I woke up with a start this morning and realized I had to write about the Gay Way. In the Keepa piece, I made passing reference to my paternal grandfather running a bowling alley across the Snake River in Idaho. That was the Gay Way Bowl, in Fruitland. It's one of those things you just can't make up. If you still don't believe me, here's a piece about Gayway Junction from Fruitland history:

True & Faithful? - More Springville Evidence

This is the sort of evidence that we've had for a while, but it takes a bit of sorting to figure out. We have also been checking against LDS Ward records in Salt Lake City as well as in Springville.

First of all, I haven't continued with the "Springville in Context" series because 1857 gets so depressing! Mountain Meadows wasn't the only horrible tragedy of that year (and I encourage everyone to read the book by LDS Church Historians, Massacre at Mountain Meadows.) Springville itself was home to the Parrish-Potter murders, another terrible story. There are some very good and reliable sources about that. I refer you to published articles by Polly Aird on Mormon apostasy and the murders in Springville and Ardis Parshall on another incident involving a letter of President Brigham Young and the general state of things that year. Ardis is a friend of mine and I trust her work. And she refers to Polly Aird favorably.

Then, because of the Utah War and the relocation of thousands of Mormons from Salt Lake County to Utah County in 1858, ward records are very confused for a few years. The Springville records seem to have gaps from 1857-1860. So there is a lack of church records in the very period in which Elinor Vaughan and Jane and John Lewis and son seem to disappear.