Mel's Fantastical Insights

One of the things we all hope to find as genealogists is personal histories. Wouldn't it be fantastic if everyone could have written even a paragraph about themselves and it aaas preserved and findable? Unfortunately this is not the case. This is actually the reason I began looking into my ancestors about a year ago. I was determined after getting a BA in research aka history, that I could find more information than what we currently had available. I was right in my impulse. Our greatest source has been the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers. They have been collecting histories on the pioneers for a very long time, and luckily I have a lot of pioneer ancestors. My first stop at their archives revealed a lot of treasures but one of my favorites has been the personal history written by Mariah Taysom. Mariah Jaynes lived on the border of Wales and England in the Monmouth area. She met a Mormon missionary by the name of Charles Taysom and became converted to the Church of Jesu...

Today's blog prompt for the Fearless Females was asking about a favorite recipe, or a recipe handed down through generations. I don't know if there are recipes that have made it through the years (mostly I come from a long line of recipe embellishers and non written recipes), but I would like to talk a little bit about the kitchen. My grandmother is remembered as always making something for somebody and always wearing her apron. Everyone I have talked to has said that Vonnie was the best cook. My mom says she never remembers Grandma cooking anything fancy but that everything tasted fantastic. Except for the liver and onions that she was fond of. One of the things that she made that she was definitely remembered for was her candy making. Grandma would make divinity for the holidays and piano recitals and a few other occasions. Apparently her divinity was famous because the few who have mentioned it to me get that look on their face like they are remembering the best thi...

I am combining the prompts from the 4th and 5th. They ask if you have marriage certificates and then stories about how the people met and later became married. I have found a few citations of marriage records but have seen very few, while I am grateful for the indexers who put the information out there I can't wait until they get around to attaching images. Although I guess I can always pay for the actual documents but who wants to do that? Regardless, this is one of my favorite stories. My grandma, LaVon Taysom, was the oldest of a lot of kids. When she was a teenager her parents sent her and two of her sisters to live with their grandparents (Hammers) in Pleasant View, UT. While there, they would attend the local dances and she eventually met Marshall Maycock. Now being proper, as they dated, her sisters went with them as chaperones. Eventually LaVon and Marshall decided to get married. She was only 17 so on their marriage certificate her birthday says 10 Jul 1908!! ...

Yesterday's blog prompt on women's family history is to tell if you are named for some ancestor in your family. You can tell how awesome I am at keeping up with these. I am not named for an ancestor, but my daughter is. Ask my son and he will tell you the story of his name, how there are many many Daniel's and Daniels on our family tree. He had me print out a family tree so he could circle them all. While he was doing that he ran to his sister and showed her all the Alice's that he could find. In my 8 generations there are about 5. Obviously that's give or take since I am not going to count sisters, daughters that I am unaware of, etc. But Alice is definitely a family name. Alice was destined to be Ruby. I met Ruby and David Haight at a missionary homecoming in Burley, ID many years ago. Since I met them I have loved the name Ruby. While Alice was being bathed and monitored my husband decided that Ruby should not be her name, we decided on Alice. Danie...

March is such a great time. One of the things I have found in my many "Pinteresting" moments was a blog that had a bunch of writing prompts on female ancestors during the Month of March which is Women's History Month. Woohoo! So I am already behind, always, but I will answer a few of the prompts since I find them interesting. For March 1st, the prompt was do you have a favorite female ancestor? I have always had a hard time narrowing down my favorite of anything. I can't ever decide on a favorite song, or hymn or artist or author. I love so many things! It is obviously impossible for me to pick my favorite female ancestor but I will restrain myself and choose just a few to reminisce about. First of all one of my favorites is Mary Humphries/Humphris/Humphreys. I have already blogged about her but she has always been an inspiration to me after knowing that her family traveled in the Willie Handcart Company. Mary came from England, settled in Pleasant View,...