Happy Sabbath

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:

But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:

For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

Exodus 20:8-11

Happy Sabbath!  I hope that like I am, you are having  good day of rest from your normal labors and enjoying a nice three day weekend.  The sun has actually come out this afternoon and it is a beautiful day in my neighborhood.  Hopefully we will continue to enjoy the sunshine tomorrow when I hope to travel to visit with my dear Dad and pay a visit to my dear Mother's grave.  It would be nice to have a bit of time to plant a flower or vegetable or two this coming week too.

But today is Sunday.  I love Sunday.  I love that I often have time for an afternoon nap.   I love that I can teach Sunday School and share my testimony, and hopefully strengthen someone else's faith in Jesus Christ.  I love that I can listen to others share their faith and testimony with me.  I love that I can worship through singing hymns of praise to our Lord and Savior.   I love that I have the chance to partake of the very personal ordinance of the sacrament almost every single week.  I'm very grateful for the worthy priesthood holders who stand in the place of Jesus Christ, and represent Him each week so I can promise to Him once again that I will do my best to represent Him, follow His example, and do all that I can to further His work here on this earth.

Modern prophets warn and instruct us that we need to give the sacred Sabbath day back to the Lord. We belong to the Lord.  He paid for our sins with his Atonement.  By observing the Sabbath day, spiritual power will come to us.  We need to teach our families to observe the Sabbath Day.  As we attend worship services prepared with questions to be answered, the Lord will teach us.  As we refrain from working and shopping on the Sabbath Day, our faith will increase and through our example faith across the world will increase.

And that thou mayest more fully keep thyself unspotted from the world, thou shalt go to the house of prayer and offer up thy sacraments upon my holy day;
For verily this is a day appointed unto you to rest from your labors, and to pay thy devotions unto the Most High;

Doctrine and Covenants 59:9, 10

May you and yours have a very Happy Sabbath.

Reflections on A to Z of My Family Tree

I believe that 2015 is the third year in a row that I have officially joined the A to Z blogging challenge, and even though true to form, April ended up throwing me a few curves, and not all of my posts were finished and published on the day intended, They were all completed by the end of the challenge this year.  (last year I had really good intentions of going back and catching up, with several drafts in the works.  But, I was trying to complete the challenge on two entirely separate blogs and I guess I just burned myself right out.)

I knew very early on this year what I wanted to blog about, and have been strongly committed to see this challenge through to the end.  I do not claim to be an expert in history or genealogy, but I have access to many wonderful stories and photos about my family and my ancestors, and was very excited to share them on my blogs.  Between my own family tree and that of my dear husband, I was able to find family names and stories for every letter of the alphabet except U and X.  I did have to get a bit creative for those two posts. 

I also enjoyed exploring  bit from the A to Z linky, and finding new bloggers to visit and learn from.  I must confess that time did not allow me to visit as much r s many blogs as I would have liked. I have a very limited amount of time each day to spend blogging, and most of it was spent trying to keep up with my own posts, but I did try to meet and visit at least one new blogger every day.  Maybe next year I will do a better job of preparing my posts early in the year so I can spend my April blogging time visiting new blogging friends.

I have had the blessing of having several amazing mentors in the area of family history.  My greatest mentor was my very own dear sweet mother who left this mortal world right in the middle of this year's challenge on Friday, April 17th.  My mother has been an avid researcher of her family history for most of her life, and in her later years usually spent two days each week at the LDS Family History Library in Salt Lake City searching through books and microfilms of records from all over the world for information about our forebears. I remember many a Sunday afternoon and evening in my childhood was spent hearing stories about my grandparents and great grandparents and copying information from my mother's collection of family records into my own book of remembrance, meant for me to keep when I left home.  Much of the information that I have in my own possession is  information that she has shared with me.  Needless to say, there were quite a few days near the end of the challenge that I was not able to post as I was busy preparing a condensed version of her own life history to present as a life sketch at her funeral.  I was very honored to have the opportunity to do this for my family.  I am also grateful that I was able to do a bit of catch up work and finish all of the posts before the end of the month.

Another one of my mentors was my father's dear sweet sister who died just a week ago, just after the challenge ended.  This aunt has collected much of the information on my father's side of the family tree, helped me do some research when I was taking a family history class during my college years, and has done much over the years to organize family meetings and to help keep the family stories alive and available for the members of the upcoming generations.

Why is our family tree so important to the members of my family? Of course it is fascinating to learn the stories of our grandparents and their grandparents who lived so many years ago.  I think most people are drawn to learn more of their own family history.  I also believe that this prophesy by the Old Testament prophet Malachi helps us to understand our urge to learn about our family history

5 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord:

 6 And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.  (Malachi 4: 5,6)

 

We believe that this prophesy is being fulfilled in modern times as so many people search out their ancestors in order to offer them the saving ordinances of baptism and other sacred temple ordinances as they were taught by Jesus Christ and other ancient prophets when these great men were living on the earth that have not always been available to all mankind. 

  As my own dear mother once wrote:

When you think of the history of the world and who created it for us;  all the prophets in the Old Testament, the times of the New Testament and the life of Jesus Christ and all he did for us;  you are grateful for your many blessings.  For one thing, the scriptures, so you can know of these things. Then there was the dark ages where there was not much light to live by.  It makes you wonder about  your great, great, great, great, great, great grandparents and so forth, and you feel sorry for them and you want to find their names and have their work done for them.  for you know that Joseph Smith restored the light of the gospel to the earth in these latter days where everyone can have happiness if they just keep the commandments.

And that, dear friends, hopefully explains my compulsion this past month to explore and share some of my family tree from A to Z.

Z is for Zebulon

(Note:  I have now completed all of my Family Tree from A to Z posts, including the days that I missed last week from letters S, T, U, and V.  Feel free to scroll down and catch up on what you may have missed).


Zebulon Collings, as noted previously in C is for Collins or Collings, or Collyns was born 1706 in Pennsylvania to Sir Anthony Andrew Collings and Lady Jane Lancelot Collings of Cornwall, England. 

Zebulon married Mary Johnstone on October 30, 1746 in New Jersey.  No photos available from back in 1706, and the only source listed for Zebulon on the familysearch.com website is an index of New Jersey marriage records from 1678 to 1985.  

And there you have it . . . my family tree from A to Z . . . or at least a portion of it.    

Hopefully someday I can have it verified and accurate, and perhaps meet and converse with these family members in the world to come?

Y is for Young

I've had to go back quite a way to find a "Y" name on my family tree:

According to the information on my family tree at familysearch.org,

My paternal great, great, great, great, great, great (6th) grandmother, Janet Young was christened on the March 21, 1726  in Sprouston, Roxburg, Scotland. 

She married James Atchison on January 9, 1754 in the same location, and they were the parents of two children:  Margaret Atchison and Jean Atchison.   Margaret was my 5th great grandmother.  This family line eventually moved from Scotland to Wales, and then to the United States through the Gibby line.  (See G is for Gibby).

The Young line continues on back to 1631 through Janet's father John Young, grandfather John Young, and great grandfather William Young.

location of Roxburghshire in Scotland  Source: Wikipedia

Do you have any Youngs on your family tree?  (we might be cousins!)

X is for X-tra

(Note: Due to my Dear Mother's recent death and funeral, I have fallen behind in this year's A to Z Challenge.  Please check back in the coming week for the missing posts S, T, U, and V.)

X-tra, X-tra, Read all about it!

Have you ever wondered how you can discover your own family tree and what you can do to help others find theirs?   By getting involved with Indexing at Familysearch.org

Indexing makes records searchable online.  Everyone deserves to be remembered and you could help make this possible.  No special skills or time commitments are required, but you and I can help people from all around the world find and trace their ancestry for free.  Click on the following link to find short video that tells what indexing is and how it works:
Familysearch.org Indexing

Try it out and then come back and let me know how you liked it!

W is for Wagstaff, Willie, and William

(Note: Due to my Dear Mother's recent death and funeral, I have fallen behind in this year's A to Z Challenge.  Please check back in the coming week for the missing posts S, T, U, and V.)

John Wagstaff  (photo source:  familysearch)

W is for Wagstaff, one of my main family lines, that has been researched back to 1490 in Bedfordshire,  England.  John Wagstaff, my great, great grandfather who was born in 1861,  is the ancestor on this line who emigrated from England to the United States in 1862, sailing from Liverpool England to New York City on the ship "William Tapscott" , then later continuing on to Salt Lake City, Utah.

W is also for Willie, another main family line that has been researched back to 1557 in Otterford, Somerset, England.  My great great grandfather, James Gray Willie was the Willie ancestor who who emigrated from Somerset England to New York City, where he married and then continued on to Nauvoo, Illinois, and Salt Lake City, Utah.  He later returned to England as a missionary for his church, and on the return trip home was asked to lead a group of pioneers traveling by handcart across the United States to Utah.  Due to circumstances beyond their control, they left late in the season and were trapped by early snows in Wyoming, many perishing before reaching their destination, but most were miraculously rescued and made it to their destination.  The movie 17 Miracles  is one source that documents this story.

W is for William, a good solid name that appears countless times on my family tree.  There is in fact a stretch of five continuous generations of William Wagstaffs in Bedfordshire between the years of 1693 and 1579.   There is a William Willie in born in Devonshire, England in 1763, who married and died in Somerset.  There are many other Williams in the other branches of my family tree.  Someday I need to take the time to count them all!

V is for Valentine and VERIFY

I have  possibly two individuals on my family tree with the name of Valentine:  Mary Valentine on the Odell/Pettit lines and David Valentine Kennett or Kinnett on the Collins line.  I have proof of neither of these connections, only charts that show that someone has at some point in time believed that these people are my ancestors.

Which brings me to one of the most important words when working on your family tree:

VERIFY

Yes, the importance of verifying your information cannot be stressed enough.  This is the work of our generation.    Find as many documents and sources for information on each ancestor and family member as you can.  Start with journals, bibles, letters, and other documents.  Verify the information you find with vital records, church and parish records, census records, birth and death certificates, obituaries, wills, land records and deeds, military records, marriage records.  The possibilities are many and varied, and will vary greatly depending on the location where your family and ancestors lived, and the time period.  Many records have been lost over the years, which is very unfortunate, but whenever you do find information, make photo copies wherever possible.  Document where the records were found, cite bibliographies, locations etc.

V is for the magic word in genealogy and family history.  V is for Verify.