A Note on My Research

When we are introduced to the pedigree sheet, many of us refer to it as the family tree, perhaps because of its form: one becomes two, two become four, etc. You see that I have used those lines, the antecedents as the roots of the tree, and the common ancestors as the trunk of the tree from which we branch out.

My writing comes more from my family group sheets in which I tried to keep records of where I found the information I use. My research has been piece work and has time between searches. The benefit for me is that I stumble upon a new source and learn new information, however out of sequence it might be. And I return to sources- books, entries, films- that have been rich in  information before.

I have just for a week or so been reading The Mormon Trail, Yesterday and Today, by William E Hill. Published in 1996 by the Utah State University Press [ISBN 0-87421-202-2] it has provided me with some background on the immigration routes used into the west by many groups, with maps, guidebooks and diaries as well as photographic depictions of pioneering and modern points along the way. The author also points me toward other writing I had not considered or had not known existed before.

Researching in another project recently led me to the  BYU, Religious Education site online [www.rsc.byu.edu] which includes such titles as "Icelandic Conversion and Emigration: A Sesquicentennial Sketch" which gave me some insight to Gudmund Gudmundsen's journey to Utah.

My point in these few paragraphs is that I have not done scholarly study and research in my family's history; rather it has been personal, for love of the family and the story and is not yet complete. And that delights me no end! I invite you to to make such a journey for yourself.

Perhaps we will cross paths, as we have seen happen here:
Evan Stephens, who appears frequently in the LDS Hymnal, was in one of the down-and-back wagon trains that Peter Garff manned. Chapter 5 in the book Peter Niels Garff begins, "Peter did not realize that the twelve-year-old boy in the Stephens family would become the eminent Evan Stephens..." Letters From Home commented in this blog about a song that is included in the Garff book on pages 28 and 29 called Teamsters Chorus and is dedicated "to the teamster Peter Garff who drove the Welsh Ox Team". Letters From Home is a descendant of Peter, with whose family I will begin the next generation.