Grandma's Pie A New Way To Look To Your Family With FS Data

This sight was a developed by the BYU technology engineers to interface with Family Search.  Relative Finder originated through a group of students in the same department.  

There is a video on the home page of the website that explains how to us it. I have only looked at it briefly but it looks fun and is also a new tool to find people, estimate where unknown family members are most from, etc. Think of it as a fan chart that takes everything to the next level.
 

Serendipity With My Heritage ~ Book Matching

For decades I have noticed that the view from Highway 24 of Mt. Diablo is gorgeous especially in the spring.  I've wanted to get a photo of it that was unobstructed by buildings, road signs, traffic, electrical wires and humankind. 

I wanted to capture something that celebrated to earth view and not the world view.  We've lived in the shadow of it for most of our lives, Sunday's drive by came close to my goal!
Serendiptity equals a happy accident...which did occur.  How does this apply to family history you are probably thinking.

Well when we learn about something new like book matching technology it is a good idea to check it out.  I thought about my family tree and considered who I might want to get more information about.  I chose my paternal 3rd great-grandfather, Newcomb Godfrey. Born in NY in 1806.

I went to the website http://myheritage.com.  >

On My Heritage you click on the Research Tab>

You see a search box but on the right hand sidebar you have some filtering choices.>

Select Books and Publications>

Now enter your person's information in the search box at the left upper corner>

Select Enter and Voila!  You will see some things that hopefully will be as much of a surprise as I did.

https://www.myheritage.com/research?s=208942181&formId=publication&formMode=&action=query&exactSearch=0&useTranslation=1&catId=8020&qname=Name+fn.Newcomb+ln.Godfrey

I  then looked at the very first entry for Newcomb.  I opened it and read it and save it and entered it into my sourcebox and attached it to my 3rd Great-Grandpa.  Now that book reference is captured and saved to Family Search.  

In the process of doing that I remembered that I had been trying to get another person to release the sealing of Newcomb to his parents Elijah Godfrey and his wife Hannah Reynolds.  No response from the person in two years.  This family work was begun over ten years ago.  I checked last night and Family Search had finally released it so I quickly reserved the sealing for us to do soon! 

 From the article that I saved from this first book entry I learned for the first time that Hannah Reynold was of Irish descent.

I 'd say that was serendipity wouldn't you? Below is the source I created in Family Search to attach to my ancestor's Person Details Page in the Family Tree.

My Heritage and Book Matching Technology

Redwoods in Oakland CA

Each of the the big genealogy companies have a lot to love but My Heritage stands head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to advanced searching technology.

Here is a current press release from My Heritage on their new and exciting Book Matching Technology.

EL AVIV, Israel & LEHI, Utah, April 7, 2016 — MyHeritage, the fastest-growing destination for discovering, preserving and sharing family history, has launched today a revolutionary addition to its suite of technologies: Book Matching. This innovation automatically researches users’ family trees in historical books with high precision.

In April 2012 MyHeritage launched SuperSearch™, a search engine for historical records, which has since then grown to include 6.6 billion historical records, including birth, marriage, death and census records. By implementing its vision of enhancing genealogy with technology, MyHeritage then developed a line of unique and sophisticated technologies that automatically match the records from the search engine to the 32 million family trees uploaded by its users.

In December 2015, MyHeritage expanded its data collections to include digitized historical books, with an initial corpus of 150,000 books of high genealogical value. This collection was tripled last week to 450,000 books with 91 million pages. With a team of more than 50 dedicated curators, MyHeritage aims to add hundreds of millions of pages of digitized books to the collection each year.

As of today, MyHeritage users will receive matches between profiles in their family trees and the books from this collection. The Book Matching technology analyzes the book texts semantically, understanding complex narrative that describes people, and matches it to the 2 billion individuals in MyHeritage family trees with extremely high accuracy. This breakthrough technology is the first of its kind, and is exclusive to MyHeritage.

Book Matching has produced more than 80 million matches, and this number will continue to grow as the collection grows and as the family trees on MyHeritage continue to expand. Book Matching is currently available for English books, and the technology is being enhanced to cover additional languages. In addition, de-duplication technology is being added in the next few weeks to remove duplicate books that have been scanned and OCRed more than once by different sources.

“No one has ever done this before,” said MyHeritage Chief Technology Officer, Sagi Bashari. “Our Book Matching technology reads hundreds of thousands of books for you, every hour, comparing them to your family tree and pointing you to relevant excerpts about your ancestors with almost no false positives. MyHeritage is the first to offer full semantic text analysis in this way, and the genealogical breakthroughs speak for themselves. You will be amazed at the value of books for your research.”

“I’ve personally seen what this new technology can do, using my own family tree,” said blogger and lifelong genealogist Leland Meitzler. “It found well over 500 books with information on my family, most of which I’d never seen before. All kinds of ancestors and relatives can now be added to my tree! To say that this new search technology changes everything would be an overstatement, but not by much.”

Genealogist James Tanner said: “This advanced technology from MyHeritage opens up a whole new world of research possibilities that were almost completely unavailable in the past. I have always valued the content of the older genealogy books because the people who wrote them were contemporaries with my ancestors. Being able to search these books on a large scale will change the way most of us have been doing genealogy and our attitude towards the books that have been there all along but were not searchable.”

Dick Eastman, of Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter, summed up MyHeritage’s latest innovation: “MyHeritage Book Matching is like having a huge library at your fingertips, with a twist; there is a magical librarian who tells you exactly which books have information about your ancestors.”

Book Matches are available at www.myheritage.com and are generated automatically for any family tree built on the website or imported into it. A Data subscription is required to view Book Matches."

Dick Eastman has written about this new technology.

https://blog.eogn.com/2016/04/07/myheritage-releases-exclusive-book-matching-technology-for-family-historians/

Family Search YouTube Channel

To use YouTube go to YouTube in your url bar.  it will bring up YouTube.   Then you go to the place on the homepage where you can search.  Enter Family Search.  A page will come up, select a video to watch.  Some are lengthy.  Many are under 4:00 Minutes.  The length of the video will be visible on the place where you select it.They are just little snippets of information that often comes in very handy.

This is one way I try to learn little nuggets to fill in the holes in my Swiss Cheese Genealogy/Family History brain.

Here are three random ones I selected to give you an idea of how these work.  All are very short.  You can subscribe to this channel and any other on YouTube.  YouTube is one of the biggest and best search engines on the internet.  If you want to know how to do anything...check with YouTube.

https://youtu.be/-9vA8juUpYs

https://youtu.be/n7wVn4oFjH0

https://youtu.be/QdQkN7DB7uo

Hashtags And the Proper Way To Use Them

Technology is moving so quickly as we all know.  For most of us over 50 there is a struggle to keep up with it all.  I don't know how interested I'd be in Hashtags if we didn't have kids and grandkids that do keep up.  So as a result I we want to keep up with them, we need to learn it.

Jim pointed out today that working in the library we should also be aware of what hashtags are and how they are used in social media. 

Social Media sites are a great place to keep our family history, to learn family history and to share photos and stories with others. 

As an example, Facebook had thousands of user groups about genealogy, localities, and surnames.  It is a great place to find relatives that are also Facebook users.  Pinterest and Twitter are also fantastic sources for what we do.  Instagram is another one that is great for sharing family history and photos. 

All of them use hashtags.  The caveat is the hashtag rules are different for them all.  They differ in purpose.  Even General Conference for the Church uses Twitter. You can follow it during conference at #genconf .  Next time you are watching General conference take not of the hashtag right in the screen down in the lower left corner of the scree.   People give commentary on things they like, etc. 

 #Rootstech did the same thing at that big conference.
They post all kinds of messages relevant to the conference like room changes, etc.  You are out of the loop without access.

Ahh...Social Media!  That stuff is coming at us from every angle now if we connect with people other than through email.  We have to self educate ourselves to survive in this techie world.

Again if you have a younger family they don't really use email much.  When I send something via email I have to send them a text alert to even check their email!  

So hashtags.  Here is a link to the article I found on Thomas Mac Entee's blog this morning. 

https://blog.hootsuite.com/how-to-use-hashtags/

A previous post I did on Instagram and hashtags:

http://alegacythatmatters.blogspot.com/2016/01/using-instagram-for-your-family-history.html

Ancestry DNA Alert

Judy Russell, The Legal Genealogist

Meet Judy if you don't already know her.  The Legal Genealogist is a very popular blogger among people who enjoy Genealogy and learning.  She is an expert on many things and one of them is DNA.  She posted a good alert today.

I am going to quote a part of her post and redirect you to the full message.  Ancestry deleted some DNA test results, including DNA samples that had a lot of people up in arms a few years back.  I remember reading a lot of commentary on the "whys" but bottom line for many people was that they now had no way of reclaiming the information and things were lost.  For many their their DNA donor was then deceased.  Hmm.  So when I saw this alert I wanted to share if you are an Ancestry customer for DNA.

"AncestryDNA alert Posted: 19 Apr 2016 07:00 AM PDT Act now to preserve data There are changes coming soon — possibly very very soon — to the matching system at AncestryDNA that may make some of the folks who’ve tested there lose some bits and pieces of information they have now. This isn’t going to be altogether a bad thing, since the theory is that most of the things that will drop out of sight will be bits and pieces that are unlikely ever to lead to a common ancestor. In short, the hope is all of our matches will be better, stronger and more accurate. But there are some aspects that will be problematic, and folks need to act now to minimize any collateral damage from the change. Here’s what’s happening: AncestryDNA is revising its system for evaluating matches in two ways. First, it’s revising its phasing data to more accurately identify bits and pieces of DNA that are genealogically significant. Second, it’s changing its matching system to use actual segments from start to end rather than artificially designated windows. What does that mean? In plain English, some of the people who are showing up as matches at AncestryDNA right now will stop showing up as matches. Not huge numbers (not like the last time AncestryDNA revised its system and some folks lost as many as 90% of their matches) — but some. At the same time, some people who now don’t show up as matches may appear in the match list. So in terms of sheer numbers of matches, there isn’t going to be any big change. AncestryDNA says no-one who now appears as a second cousin or closer will drop off anyone’s match list. And it’s promised that we will be able to download data on anyone in the current match list where we’ve either added a note to that match’s record or added a star to the record for our own research. But — and here’s a big but — " Discover the rest of her post here:  http://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/2016/04/19/ancestrydna-alert/ Judy has some fascinating posts on the law, her family and other things of interest.  Check it out! If you ever see her speaking in the area by all means go.  She is an amazing presenter as well as writer.

We're Watching You!

Finally on Family Search /Family Tree we have another very effective deterrent to irrational changes without sources.   Now there is a box that pops up telling you how many other people are watching the person you plan to edit.  This is brilliant.

From James Tanner post on this new feature see it here.

Since the creation and launch of Family Tree three years ago, we have talked about monitoring your people by Clicking on the Star on the Person Details Page in Family Tree.

This monitoring allows you to be notified by email once a week when someone has made a change on one of your ancestors.  Some people do not play by the rules and make changes based on wishes instead of SOURCED facts.  Some people put in things that are completely irrational without carefully checking the feasibility of such entries.  You know the ones, children born after the mother's death, children born before the father, etc.   Some people have deleted relationships and ordinances and even people for reasons unknown because they do not even fill in why they are making the changes.   Most of the time they are made without sources being added.  This has understandably led to some people losing faith in this process.

This new feature will refocus someone in the moment they are about to make a change.  They will no doubt recheck their entry before completing the edit.  Thank you Family Tree developers.

Some are new at family history, some are young, some are very old.  Some people make honest mistakes, others are just careless.  Most are well-intended.  This new feature will help a lot.

Most want Family Tree perfect right now.  They do not understand that FS/FT is a process towards perfection.  This is a process that will take time and it's unrealistic to think it will be instantaneous when we are trying to clean up 150 years of records.  We have made great advances in three years but the work is not done.

By creating one world wide tree as we work together it will become better and better.  The synergy of working together on a common goal of a perfected tree is better than each one of us doing our own thing.  This is not a great idea since we share so many common ancestors with others.  Collaboration will move us all forward.  Some people do not want to participate at all thinking why should I? I did all this hard work, why should I share it? Why not share it?  Think about that.  Another thing is why should I share it ...I have no descendants.  Do your siblings or your cousins or other people who share these same ancestors seek after this information you are holding so close?  Probably.  Whatever happened to random acts of kindness and unselfishness or contributing to the common good of all? Just sayin'...

Some people  resist clicking on that star to Watch their people.  I am not sure why. If you value your time and effort getting things into the tree with good sources, wouldn't you want to see the changes made by others?  On a wiki-based database, it is a little nuts not to do this.  Beside you might get some new information yourself.  We cannot just assume that because we added something it is perfectly correct.  We do not hold all the documents or information on our ancestors.  Others have their share as well.

To get the perspective of responding appropriately to others and their changes please read James Tanner's blog post about it here:  It is very insightful.

http://rejoiceandbeexceedingglad.blogspot.com/2016/04/responding-appropriately-to-changes-in.html

Real Time Family History

The view from Jen and Lowell's front porch

Whenever we go to Utah or anywhere we are with our family we take a lot of photos.  Kids today have such a chronology of photos of themselves growing up that I am sure they will remember their childhoods far better than we do.  Photos capture the details of our lives.  Studies have actually been done on this with children.  Photos create what I call "heart prints" for people that endure.  Not just the formal ones but the ones where we look more real.  The ones that are not always flattering but that remind us of precious moments of real life.

We had a great time with our kids while we celebrated Easter and also our son's Chris' birthday and our granddaughter Piper turning 17.  Jim went to do Grampa Camp with the three younger girls while Jen and Piper went off to check out some colleges in Oregon.  That is a long standing tradition for these kids and they love Grampa Camp.  

Grampa Camp was created when Hazel was very tiny and in the hospital a lot.  It took four adults to keep those four kids going.  Jen and I would go to the hospital and trade off shifts while we stayed in the Ronald Mc Donald House in Salt Lake.  Lowell would keep working and fill in for us on weekends.  Jim minded the kids an hour away from the hospital where they lived.  He got them to school, cooked for them, did  their hair, etc.  This great tradition was born.  He is a phenomenal Grandfather!

Here are some of the captured moment of those couple of weeks with our family.  

Hazel looking so hip with 

with messy hair!

Chloe serving "Tea" at Piper's Birthday party!

Note her apron and the kitchen towel...just like Grampa!

We all colored and decorated Easter Eggs with friends.

Lots of eggs more than 8 dozen.

  Friends brought some to take home.

Out on the dream porch at the Stewart's

is always a treat!

Julia made some pretty ones too!

Hazie with her dog Leo.  

Not sure where Lucy was at this 
moment they're usually together.

Aynslee, Missy and I went to

 The General Conference Women's Session 

at the Conference Center in Salt Lake City

with 21,000 other ladies on Easter Eve.

Excellent experience to share with them.

https://youtu.be/ctFKhTTXtVk

We had an Easter Egg Hunt on Easter with the Grandkids

Connor and Owen checking out the loot!

We enjoyed Chris and Missy's ward at church that morning,

and a relaxing afternoon of togetherness.

Rare shot of Jim in a chair just hanging out.

Grampa and some of the kids!

Nose to nose

Zach, Piper, Aynslee, Grampa, Julia

A few more of us joined in!

Nose to nose

Zach, Connor, Piper, Gramma, Grampa, Aynslee, Julia

,

Missy prepared an amazing dinner~this is the kids' table.

Jen and Hazie getting ready for dinner!

The six youngest kids sat here and the two oldest, 

Piper and Connor sat with the adults.

The buffet with the Birthday boy, Chris @41 and Zachary

Jen and  Lowell

Prom Match!

Other days of our stay..music fills their home!

Connor practicing his music.   

He played in Sacrament meeting on 

Easter Morning.  What a treat for us.

Aynslee practicing her violin after school one day!

Zachary on the clarinet!

I love how the kids just come home and practice.

I saw no prompting and no whining!  

Jim and Chris built a great garden shed while we were there.

  It is not finished yet but the framing and roof are on. 

 Chris will finish the rest. 

 Six barn doors, interior and paint, etc.

Jim building memories with our boy!

They do it up right!

Spring is on the way...What's not to love?

Family Search Updates For March 2016

Here's the March update from Jesse Hyde.

March 29, 2016 By Jesse Hyde

"Each month, FamilySearch publishes a list of new changes and updates to the FamilySearch.org website. This list includes changes to Family Tree as well as other parts of FamilySearch.org. In some cases, these changes will also be published as individual articles where the need to do so exists.

Recently Released

Search: Oral Genealogies

A new collection of unique and high-quality data is being added to the Genealogies search. Oral genealogies consist of large lineage-linked trees constructed from the memories of tribal, clan, or family leaders in Africa, Tonga, and other locations. Most trees come with attached audio, PDF, and image artifacts documenting the interviewee and the recorded family history from which the tree was generated. These represent the only family history that will likely be obtained from these locations and are believed to be highly accurate.

To search for an ancestor in the oral genealogies, at the top of the screen, hover your cursor over Search. In the drop-down list, click Genealogies.

The Search Genealogies screen appears.

Search: Updated Person Card

The person card displayed on the search pages has been updated. It now matches the person cards that you see in Family Tree. The new card includes the Watch or UnWatch control and the number of Sources, Discussions, and Memories.

FamilySearch Research Wiki: Updated

The FamilySearch Research Wiki (https://familysearch.org/wiki/en/Main_Page) has been updated. We have moved to the most current, stable version of WikiMedia. This has made some changes to where you access options on the pages, but we can now correct problems we couldn’t fix in the earlier research wiki platform.

How is it different?

New URL. The wiki now has a new URL (https://familysearch.org/wiki/en/Main_Page)

Navigation on the left. The update moves the navigation to the left side, making it consistent with other wikis using the MediaWiki software.

Personal Tools. In the earlier wiki, the Personal Tools option was on the right side. Those options are still available, but now when you sign in, they appear after your name in the top right portion of the screen.

Same articles. All the articles that were in the previous wiki are in the update.

Bookmarks still work. If you’ve bookmarked articles, when you click the bookmark, the system will redirect you to the new page.

New editing tool. When you add information to the wiki, you’ll now be using VisualEditor to format the information when you click the Edit tab. Clicking on the Edit Source tab will still allow you to edit in wikitext.  

All browsers. You can now contribute to the wiki using any popular browser. (Chrome users rejoice!)

New look for the state and country pages. We are in the process of giving a new look to the state and country pages.

FamilySearch Research Wiki: Easy Access to Online Genealogy Records

Did you know the research wiki has a page with links to online genealogy records? The page is easy to get to and easy to use. The links include collections that are not available on FamilySearch.org.

1. On any research wiki page, look at the navigation on the left.
2. Click Online Genealogy Records. A page appears with the list of links.



3. Click the country, province, state, or county records you are interested in. The system displays a page with links to the online records for that place. There may be a brief description of contents. If there is a cost to use the records, you will see ($) after the collection name.



4. To go to the records, click the link to the specific record collection.

Coming Soon:

When You Change Information, How Many Users Will Be Notified?

Soon, when you edit a person’s information in Family Tree, like birth or occupation, the system will display the number of users who are watching that person. Watching means that users have asked the system to let them know when any changes or additions are made to the person’s information in Family Tree. So when you change the information, that’s how many people will be notified by the system.

Filed Under: What's New at FamilySearch?, What's New on Family Tree? 9 Comments Tagged With: FamilySearch Wiki, oral genealogies,Search Features

BYU Family History Library Visit

One day while we were in Utah the kids were all busy and Jim was working on the shed.  I thought maybe I should take a couple of hours and go to the BYU library.  I kept thinking maybe I won't, maybe I will.  It was supposed to snow.  Finally I just made a decision.  I'm going. 

When I got there I thought I'd see if James Tanner was in the library.  I figured my chances were good since he is there most of the week teaching classes, etc.  As I approached the desk to get a new password for using their computers, an Elder approached me asking if he could help.  I asked him if James Tanner was there.  He replied, "Well he is in today but at lunch.  At 1:00 he will be teaching."  I inquired about that and asked if anyone could come and he said yes!  It was 20 minutes away.  He showed me the door where the class would be held and the door was closed.  He said, "The door will open when the prayer meeting is over."   When  I got my password I went to a computer and started to do a few things.  I was approached by this really weird guy who had a lot of really weird questions for me so was glad I had an appointment with JT at 1:00. 

Here's a picture of The Family History Library at BYU. It is a beautiful facility and right in the middle of the campus. Did you know this is the second largest library for Family History in the world?  It is!

At 1:00 o'clock absolutely nothing happened!  The mystery door was still closed,  I sat at a library table facing the door for a few minutes just waiting.  The next thing I knew JT walked up beside me and said hello.  He doesn't know me but I have talked with him on enough occasions that I looked familiar to him.  We chatted and then seriously talked about his blogs, I confessed to being a fan. He seemed quite surprised by  that.  Funny!  I then confessed to staff training and mentioning him most weeks.  He was flabbergasted! 

Finally the door opened and he and I went in.  I was expecting a classroom.  Instead it was a small conference room with big overstuffed leather chairs, a round table, etc.  I snapped a couple of photos discreetly but I think he caught me on the one below.  Whoops.  But he did crack a big smile after that and didn't ask for my camera or anything.  Thank goodness.  He knew I was taking it for all of you!  After his presentation he thanks me for coming.

There were just a few people in the room, five I think, that are on staff and then James and me.  He proceeded to teach a class about the partners that he said would never be published or declared publicly. He stated his opinions on what is happening and what will likely happen in the future.

 He also spoke about some new Green Arrows appearing out of the blue on Family Tree for children under the age of accountability that had already been sealed but are resurfacing as though they had not.  There are thousands of them that have appeared because some of the sealings from a certain period of time had been completed but not recorded properly.  He had some advice on those which was just redo them if you have previously done them or go though the channels to get FS to fix them if you are not sure.

He had another section of his presentation that was to be done online.  Sadly the entire University lost the Internet during that remainder of the time.  So he just talked and answered a few questions.

It was such a privilege to talk with him and hear him teach the staff. I love it when Life happens like that.  As luck would have it, this week he is out of the library on vacation so I went at the right time. Family History is often a serendipity experience.

Family History On The Go

Near Promontory, Utah

We've been out of town for a few weeks doing various things with and for our family.  We have two of our three kids living in Utah and 8 of our 10 grandkids.  We enjoyed celebrating two birthdays and Easter with all of them.  Jim did Grampa Camp with our four granddaughters living in SLC and he helped build a garden shed with our son, Chris in Provo.  We had a very nice dinner with our cousins, Stephen and Jeanine, what a blessing they are in our lives.  

Our days were busy but we just hung out in the evenings with our kids and grandkids and we talked...a lot.  I was able to attend the General Conference of our church, (the Women's session) with our daughter-in-law, Melissa, and our granddaughter, Aynslee. That was really wonderful attending with 21,000 other women.  

We set aside time for an overnight visit to Brigham City, Utah to pursue some Family History as well. That was such a nice little get-away for us and very productive.  We always do this whenever we can and we love our Family History adventures.  The ancestor we were researching is one of the very earliest members of the Church to emigrate out of Wales and to come to America.  He and his wife and four children sailed into America through New Orleans Port and made their way to Nauvoo, Ill, Far West, and eventually Salt Lake City.  John Rees Davis was closely associated with Brigham Young and Lorenzo both Presidents of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in their life times.

Much is written already about John Rees but we wanted to go where he lived and walk where he walked.  We did just that.  It was very rewarding.

One thing we wanted to do was to visit the cemetery where he is buried along with several family members.

The Brigham City Cemetery has 13,000 graves. Brigham City is in Box Elder County, Utah, 62 miles north of Salt Lake City.  We were at the cemetery office quite early in the morning but no one was there even though their sign said 8:00 am. We called and left a message regarding our ancestor. We then went out to the Golden Spike National historical site. While there the guy in the office called us back and told us John D. Rees was buried on A Street and was close to the road. We could return later that day and get a map to his grave. He told us that John Davis Rees is buried in the second row in from the tiny road. This was the lane it was quite long and narrow. 

There were a lot of graves close to the road and the second row in. We drove down but didn't see it. When we got near the end we decided to pull over and eat a quick lunch before proceeding to the office for the map.  We took out our food and Jim looked to the left through the driver's window and there was his grave just as pain as day.  It was quite odd considering the number of graves in the cemetery.

The sun was definitely in the wrong place for this photo but we were so glad to get it anyway.  I love the inscription on the bottom of this headstone.  It is my favorite one I've ever seen and says so much about his good man.

"How desolate our home bereft of thee."

At end of A Street a lot of people must have passed as a funeral was going on that day.  I looked at the road as Jim was taking the photo of the headstone and saw these flowers lying right in the middle of the lane that crossed A.  They had fallen off of some arrangements and came complete with wire.  Jim brought it back to the car fashioned into a little bouquet for the grave.  Perfect!  It seemed to just drop right from heaven at the right moment for John Rees. He is the son of my 3rd great grandparents and the older brother of my 2nd great grandmother, Jane Rees.  To me the flowers were for all of them.  Including his wives and children also buried in this spot.

The serendipity did not stop there. As Jim walked down to get the flowers he noticed a wooden plaque at the end of the road angled in such a way that one could not see it on the lane where we were parked.  He came back and told me the Lorenzo Snow family was also buried here...right here on the passenger side of the car.  What? I had no idea as most Presidents of the Church have been buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery. 

Note our car directly behind me!

The inscription on the monument

containing names of many descendants

on each of the other sides.

Just a stone's throw away was his actual burial place and very humble headstone.

Note the simplicity and the Temple in the distance.

As we stood and marveled at all of the treasures we had found I glanced to the right and about 20 feet away I saw this.

Apparently President Packer was from Brigham City. 

 He died less than a year ago and is

 buried right by Lorenzo snow.

We also visited the Pioneer Museum in Brigham City.  That was very nice and exhibited many Pioneer photos from the early settlement in  this area.  Brigham Young commissioned several men to take their families to Box Elder to fortify a settlement that had homesteading family being attacked regularly by the Indians.

Unfortunately none of the photos had people identified in them but they give a nice flavor of what it was like.

We did find a book with the past mayors of Brigham City.  John Davis Rees was second the mayor of the town.  He served nearly two terms but was called to serve a mission in Malad, Idaho where he died at age 65 in an epidemic that swept through that area. No wonder how desolate him home must have felt to his family left behind.

We purchased a small locally printed book about the history of the town.  In it we learned that John Rees donated some property to the town with the express instructions that it was to be maintained forever as a recreational park for the families of Brigham City.  Well we found that too!

They had some great dioramas in the little museum.   Some were interactive.  We enjoyed visiting it very much.

A Pioneer Gathering Room

A Pioneer Kitchen

A Cobbler's Shop

It is always more fun to travel with 
a purpose that goes beyond sightseeing! 

All in all this little 36 hour trip put a lot of flesh on the bones of these deceased family members and was a lot of fun as well.  If you haven't ever done family history travels you would probably find it very enjoyable.