Bambudder’s Weblog

When I was growing up and we used to visit my grandmother, Martha Caroline Kirk, I would ask her to let me look at her pictures.  She kept them in a shoe box and I would sit for hours looking at those pictures.  I don’t know what fascinated me so about them, but I knew those images were real people who were somehow there with me, but not with me.  They were family to me amd they still are.  They along with what I’ve written below is the beginnings of my search for family.  My memories formed from those visits linger with me still.  There are many memories, but I was asked to give a talk in church several years ago on the Joys of Family History for me.  some of you, who may decide to read this will not always agree with some of the things I’ve said, because it is a difference in religion, but for me it is a work that I have been called to do by the Lord himself, to connect all the dots and cross all the t’s tht connect us to our kindred dead and link us as family for eternity.  I love doing this work.  I have now over 8000 names and more that I need to put in our family history and at another time I will tell you of the Kirk’s, the Haggards, the Lowreys, the Richards and all the families that belong to us and how they got to this country and their stories, but for now bear with me and remember this is my love of family and history and memories and God’s work.  Overlook what you don’t agree with and wait for something more at a later time.  I have all the Kirk’s, all the Lowreys and Haggards history and I will get them on here, but this is an explanation of the Joy that Family History has brought to me.

My daughter once suggested that I have it published, so here goes.  This was my talk.

Good morning, brothers and sisters. Brother Grant asked us to talk about the joys of Family History.  Now I realize that sometimes that subject makes peoples eyes glaze over and sometimes they think Oh, no, not again or I don’t have time for that.  A week or so ago, we discussed in a Teacher Improvement church hobbies.  And that one of them was genealogy.  But it was also mentioned that those who do it have a certain something and that it was extremely important to them.  I hope that by the time we leave you today, you will understand that it is important, but that there is a time and a season for all things and that we all are called to do this work, and I want you to know that it is the Lord’s work.  It is one of the three fold missions of the church.  Joseph Smith said that we couldn’t be saved without our kindred dead.  But, brothers and sisters, I also want you to know it is a lifetime work and that it is a joyful work.  There are as many ways to accomplish this, as there are people in this room.  You can find joy in it and teach your children to love it as well. 

I was born in a little valley outside the little town of Louisville, Mississippi, about two miles from my grandmother’s house, but I don’t remember her until I was five.  We had moved from the farm to Bossier City, La.  For some reason my mother took us to Mississippi for a month in the summer.  On the way, I got a toothache and we had to stop in Louisville and pull my tooth.  By the time I got to my grandmother’s, I was pretty sick little girl.  My tooth had been abscessed and my face was swelling.  She put me to bed in her bed.  It was in the front room of her house next to a window looking out on the porch.  I could see the road from there and the yard . I hadn’t noticed the rockers on the porch, until later.  Many of my childhood memories are tied up with that house that porch, her yard, and the cotton field across the road.   In the yard there were 6 huge oak trees and my grandfathers shop.  It was an old cotton house he pulled up there and put in harnesses, plows, an anvil, and the tools he used to keep the plows sharpened and the harnesses repaired.  On one side of the house was what was once a peach orchard, on the other was her garden.  Down the road was the barn.  It was always fascinating to me to go into the barn because it had a loft with a ladder, stalls for the mules and stalls where each morning and evening my grandfather would call the cows in to be milked.  He would let me watch and even let me try my hand at milking.  In the yard directly in front of the house, my grandmother always had petunias and two huge arborvitaes stood like sentinels to the path leading to the house.  In the back yard was a well.  It was a wondrous sight.  It stood about where I could place my fingers and nose on it and was a funny stack of square wood.  There was a bullet shape bucket with a top on it that my grandmother put the milk after she had separated the cream from the milk and a bucket for the water.  I was always cautioned not to get to close because I might fall in.  The water was so cold and clear and sweet to the taste and I have never tasted milk that tasted the way that did after it came from the well.  I ate the first peach I ever remember eating from the tree in the orchard, but I also remember that there was big fig tree in the back yard that stood there till my grandmother died and that was where I ate my first fig.  At the back door was a funny looking step, but I just thought it was supposed to look that way.  It was a middle piece of a tree or stump and placed just below the door.  On the front porch there were four rockers, one for my grandmother, one for my grandfather and two for their two daughters left at home or for company who came every Sunday afternoon to sit on Ms Carrie’s and Mr. John’s porch.  The first 4^th of July that I remember we made homemade Ice Cream on the porch with a bucket sealed with a lid and placed in an old hand crank ice cream freezer.  We all got to take turns with the crank and that ice cream was delicious to the taste. She always had a caramel cake or a coconut pie sitting on the buffet inside her kitchen.  She made the best cream corn I ever tasted and she served Penny drink dinner and supper.  Penny drink came in a bottle that was dispensed much like KoolAid.  A few drops in a pitcher, some sugar and water and you had an orange or cherry drink seved in a big round goblet.  The goblets were almost to big for a six year old to get her hand aroung, but the drink was delicious to the taste or so it seemed to me.  Across the road in the cotton patch was a worn path from the top of the top of the hill and wound down the to the foot of the hill.  At the foot was my uncle’s house. As I grew up, I watched that house become added upon.  When I first saw it, it consisted of a front room, a dining room and kitchen and one bedroom where all thee boys slept.  My aunt and uncle slept in the front room.  It was covered on the outside with black tarpaper.  I don’t remember when they put the siding and paint on it, but it grew a porch on each end, then a living room and a bedroom and another porch replaced the porch and later a bathroom was added.  I nearly drowned in the pond where they watered their stock.  They had a truck, which had four two by fours placed so that two other two by fours to lie on top.  My uncle had it fixed so that a tarp was placed on the two by fours and would roll up and down .  We could sit on the back and ride down the road with our feet dragging in the sand we could dress up for town or church and ride in the back with the sides rolled down far enough so as not to mess up our hair or clothes.  Other times I rode with my Grandfather in his wagon to the gristmill to see bushels of white corn made into corn meal for the winter.   Another time I went with my aunt to the same man who owned the gristmill and he had put in a strange looking object. She had filled the truck with purple hull and crowder peas and butter beans.  This object I was to find out actually shelled the peas and beans.  He poured them in on one side and the peas came out the other and the hulls fell on the bottom of the cage.  Wonder of wonders, he called it a pea Sheller.

  As my children came along my grandmother would come to visit with my parents and we would all sit outside under the carport and shuck corn or shell peas by hand that my parents had raised or purchased. The children went to the garden with us.  Sometimes they played, but many times they worked along side us. Then one year when all this was taking place we went to shell peas and lo and behold my mother had come up with a wondrous object of her own.  It too was a pea Sheller.  It sits here today before you with this philodendron in it.  It now belongs to my daughter Kathy Goodwin and my grandson, Adam, called it a family antiquity. One side has a handle which turns the two little cylinders that shell the peas into a loaf pan, On the other there is still a little sticker that says it shells purple hulls, Crowder peas and butter beans, a far cry from the one I saw at the gristmill.  It was also the only thing Kathy asked for when my mother sold her home. 

Any way as time went by, I got well and later on my grandmother would bring out a shoebox and let me sit on her couch in the other front room.  That shoe box held pictures of people dressed in strange looking clothes and funny hairdo’s, old cars, buggies, mules, and a few of my dad when he was growing up.     As I grew up other pictures were added to the box of other people.  I fell in love with those pictures.  I always asked her to bring out the box when we were there.

Each year as I went home there were other experiences.  I picked my first boll of cotton, at my great aunt Stellas.  She made Tommi, my brother and me cotton sacks out of pillow cases with a strap sewed on. I saw my first honeysuckle bush, and I pumped the hand pump that my great grandfather, John Wesly Haggard put in the kitchen for my great grandmother, Hester Anne Emm Eaves Haggard..  I visited all of his living daughters,  Johnnie Mae, Rebecca Elizabeth,  Estella,  and Elnora or Nonie as we called her.  she created quite a scandal because she was a divorcee and later married the son of one of her husbands. Their only living son , William Jessie or Uncle Bill and his wife Bessie Loyd still lived on land first

homesteaded,  the land first farmed there before 1850. They lived in an old white Victorian house with blue hydrangea all along the front.  It was there I saw the first pictures of my great grand parents and their parents.   I ate my first apricot and saw them dried for pies.  I slept on my first feather bed and saw my first Billy goat.   I went to my first funeral.  It was for a twelve-year-old boy.  I learned how to churn butter and to dig peanuts; I got my grandmother’s wedding ring.  I was too young and I lost it.  I got her breadboard.  I went inside a smoke house and learned what it was for.   I met other aunts and uncles and cousins, first second, third.  We went to brush arbor meetings and I would be told to say hello to people who were great aunts and uncles and cousin so & on & on. Each year there was more family, all of whom I hold dear to my heart and stored in my memory.  Each year there were  more memories to be stored.

  It was the beginning of a lifetime love affair for me.  I found out that many of my family moved to that little area in 1834 and that many of the descendants of those early ancestors are still there.  I found out who first joined the church.  One was William Addley Haggard.  He had the first case of polio that I had ever heard of.  The year was 1875 and he was a schoolmaster.  Some missionaries came by and asked if they could hold a meeting at the school that night and he agreed.  After the meeting they asked if they could sleep on the floor at the school and he said no, to sleep at his home.  He sat up all night with them talking about the church and at daylight he asked to be baptized.  After he joined, his family was baptized and at the time members of the church began to be persecuted.  The church sent a train to the South to bring members west.  He sold all he had and caught the train and went to Colorado.  They slept in tents in the winter.  In the spring he took his family home until he could earn enough money to take a wagon train going to Texas where he heard the church was strong.  They stopped in Oklahoma and some of his children were born there and grew up and went to California.  It was one of those children who contacted my aunt in 1956 when she was over 80 and asked her about her family.  She told of  our great grandmother, Sarah Pace Haggard bringing 5 boys over the hills on mule back to Mississippi.   I later received copies of those letters and I now have 150 group sheets that she submitted and had the temple work done for the Haggard family.  Through the contact of a cousin I don’t know how many times removed that I located through the Internet, I gained her group sheets and pictures of her parents and her sisters and the store they owned after going to Oklahoma.  It was a miracle to me.

There was also a time when my grandmother showed me her picture when she was 18 years old and my grandfather was 16 years old.  I asked her about her court ship.  She didn’t tell me much about it, but she said they had gone to the church and met the preacher coming out.  He stood on the steps and married them then and there.  As they were leaving they met my great grandfather Kirk and there were two missionaries from the church passing.  He told them if they should ever join a church that they should join the Mormon Church because it was the right one.  It wasn’t until about four years ago that I found out he was a member.  I held his picture in my hand.  He was very distinguished looking in white shirt, dark pants, and a Prince Albert cut a way coat.  He was bald and had a mustache.  I held a small medical book written in his hand and his ordination paper to the Priesthood.  I read a letter informing him of the proxy work done for his dead children in the Logan Temple by a Brother Joseph Packer.  Later I read letters to him written by the missionaries who had baptized him.  He lost his medical practice and the Ku Klux Klan set upon his family.  My great grandmother never joined the church.  She hated it and so did my grandfather.  On one of those trips back home when I was little girl, he sat out under those old Oak trees and told me of the boy Joseph and the scriptures prophesying of him and of the Book of Mormon .  It was in the book of Isaiah.  He was baptized when he was fifty-five and was sealed to my grand mother by proxy after his death.

Brothers and sisters, many of us don’t feel that we have time these days to do all the things we are asked to do.  Many times family history is one of them.  But we really do have the time if we only knew it.  I have here on the podium a little jar given to me by my children and grandchildren several years ago.  It’s called a memory jar.  The Relief Society has just finished manual for Family Home Evening.  Let me suggest a game you can play with your children for Family Home Evening.  Call it Remember When or Remember Where Or Remember Who.  Give them all a little jar with a lid that they can decorate as they please.  Let him or her all write down memories they have about each family member and put a copy in each jar.  Then as days go by and you don’t have time to write in a journal or do a group sheet, write down a memory and put in your memory jar and one in theirs.  You will have been doing family history.  As you take pictures or receive pictures write on the back of them who they are, the date and what was going on.  You will be doing family history.  They each will bring you and the children such joy as you look at the memory strips or look at the pictures.  Let them know who their grandparents are even when they can’t see them often.  Tell them stories of your childhood and of your parents and grandparents.  They will come to learn to love them and feel a connection to their family, even those who are no longer with them. My grandson, Aaron Goodwin, who talked last week, recently chastised his mother, his aunt and me for saying something negative about my mother.  He made the statement that he loved her, no matter what.  That it was a great privilege for him to know her, to love her and to hear her stories and remember them.   That not many people got to know their great grandmothers.  My children did and they have their own memories her and he knows his and he loves her.  She loves him, too.  That is part of family history.  I find such joy in that and in the searching for family that I have done over the years.  I have so many stories that I  could tell you of searching them out and the tears that that I have shed and the things that I learned about them   I could tell you of the miracles that have happened.  Some of them taking twenty years or more, but they happened.  Like a Sunday morning when I received an e-mail from a distant cousin my husband Joe, telling stories and information about his great grandfather who lived to be a 108 years old.  A man I had been searching for over twenty years. Or the time I found out that my great grandfather had a daughter that I had never heard of.  Or of the e-mail I got from a little schoolteacher in Philadelphia who was related to my Eaves and of the two-step brothers Samuel Eaves and William Peter Flake. children of my great great grandparents ,James amd Elizabeth Whitehead Flake Eaves. who grew up as best friends and as brothers.   Or the time I found out that a man named Ron Prince and was related to William Adley, but had all the military history of my great grandfather Kirk’s seven sons who were doctors.  They weren’t related to him. Or again of the time I found out my father was supposed to be Gervais John Rie when he was born, but Gervais was dropped.  Twenty or so years later I found the first Gervais Kyrke in France in 1562 and that his sons , John, Thomas, James, Lewis and David led an armada of 28 British ships to the coast of Canada, captured the French governor, took over the fur trade and David became the governor of Newfoundland. I found out I was related in some way to the Campbell Clan of Scotland.  Then I found out that my Kirk Family had been traced back to Adam through the family of James Monroe, President of the US, whose sister Anne, married my ancestor Jeremiah Kirk, Jr..  Or the letter I received from a co-worker in the family history center which was given to his family and he gave it to me because his name was Thomas and  Jeremiah’s mother was Anne Thomas.  But the letter was about the Cheney family, whose descendant was that same 108 year old great grandfather of my husband.  Her name was Elizabeth, wife of Nathan Cheney.  She was writing from Winter Quarters asking her family for food and clothing for her children.  Her parents had disowned her for joining the church and she was bearing her testimony to them. Small miracles of great joy.

One last little experience I would like to tell you about that I received such joy from, was a youth baptism trip a couple of years ago.  All the youth were asked to do family names.  So I volunteered to help them get their names ready.  One at the time many of them came to the family history center and we prepared their names.  Five of those that I can remember are here today.  One was Hannah McLean, one was Tara Tolbert.  Much of their family work had been done, but they came any way to search and see if there was any ordinance work had been done.  Another was Justin Dyson.  He came with his mother, Marge, and we prepared family names for several of his great grandparents.  Then came Shannon (as she was called then) Gunter and now know as Drew because she liked her middle name.  She came down even though she wasn’t old enough to have the work done for two members of her family.  Her grandfather was a family historian extraordinaire, but here she was and she wasn’t even old enough to do baptisms, wanting to do the work.  Lastly came Daniel Myung with his mother.  This was so special because you see his father is Korean and there had been no work done for his family.  He sat at the computer and typed in names given him by his father and prepared work for his family to be done for the very first time.  I don’t remember the number that was done that night, but I heard testimonies born by Devon Smith and Daniel Morrison of the feeling of such joy they experienced as they went in the waters of baptism to be baptized for their family members. My daughter, Kathy, was there and  spoke of the feelings shared by all there that night as these young people stood as Saviors on Mount Zion for their ancestors night. They were quiet reverent feelings of great joy.

Have you ever known of a party that your friends were having or watched a game being played by your friends and not been invited or asked to play.  You could only watch.  Our ancestors know how that feels as they wait upon us to help find them and having found them to do their work.  They wait to be invited to be part of our eternal families.

I hold here in my hand many names.  These names are on pink and blue and beige cards.  Each is for a different ordinance.  The blue are male ancestors  Pink is for female ancestors.  On them are dates of ordinances performed in their behalf.  The others are for the sealing of husbands and wives.  These are for the binding and sealing powers of the Priesthood of God upon the earth to bind families together forever.  Even when we can’t do any other family history work, we can go to the temple and do this work for someone else’s family.  There is great joy is helping others do that which they can’t do for themselves.    

I hope that you feel some of the joy that I have felt as I have spoken of these things to you.  Brother and Sister Dottery and I have know each other for a long time and know of many stories of helping others find their families and having helped each other.  It is a work of joy and we can each do a little part to find that joy in our lives and help others feel that same way.

I would like to bear you my testimony of the divinity of this work.  I have been called to do it by a servant of God and had hands lain on my head and been set apart for it. But…. even if I hadn’t, I would still do this work.    I have been commanded of God through his prophet, just as you have, to do this work.  There is a time and a season for each of us to do it and in our own way.  It is a way we can do missionary work for those on both sides of the veil.  It is a marvelous work.  It is the work of the Lord.  I testify to you that it has brought me more joy and satisfaction than I can express to you.  We only have to extend ourselves a little bit and they on the other side of the veil will help us find them.  Those family members on this side of the veil will be eternally grateful for the memories you have created to help them with family history.  I leave this with you in the name of Jesus Christ.  Amen