Squaring the Circle

I just returned from a wonderful trip to Wales. On the way, I arranged to visit Temple Church in London, a place I have been trying to get to for many years. It was well worth it.

Put aside all the silliness you have heard about the Templar Knights, even Monty Python. They were deadly serious. And for all the blood and error, they were searching for and attempting to establish a concept. It was in the round church quartered by the Cross. Temple Church is in a circle based on the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. The site of the Resurrection of Jesus was considered to be the center of the earth to the medieval Christian mind. Everything radiated from there.

In 1215, powerful Barons in England threatened King John with the loss of his life and kingdom with some very good reasons. And with no candidate at the time to replace him as king, the Baron's came up with concepts instead. The most important being: No. One. Is. Above. The. Law. And they made John sign a Charter to that effect with 25 of them as guarantors to remove the king if he failed to live up to the Charter. Well, fail he did as did many kings that followed. But the principles were enshrined as the faults of the Charter slowly worked themselves out over the centuries. This is an ongoing process. 

Check out the Early Missionary Database!

This is a great resource I have previously consulted and offered up a couple of corrections or sources. At present, I may or may not be more involved (I'm still not sure what I am allowed to talk about in sharing my wonderful mission experiences on social media as Elder Uchtdorf has encouraged). See link HERE!

This is just a screen-shot of the publicly available site. Check out the link above! (or here)

So, let me say this. The project is now up to 1939, those missionaries having been born from 1914-1919 are up to their hundred-year mark so privacy concerns have diminished and the pictures we use to link up to the other missionaries in photos are already at least in the Church public domain as we get them from FamilySearch Memories pages.

"The Ancient Yew" or "Otzi, We Barely Yew Thee"

My photo of one of the yews at St. Mary's Cusop, Herefordshire on the border with Wales.

Many people come to the yew tree with preconceived notions. Modern-day Druids want to believe the yews in British churchyards are from pre-Christian origins as they "return" to the ancient practices that were mostly made up by the Romans in their anti-Celt cultural wars. The author of the yew book* before last tried to convince the reader and perhaps himself that the British yews were all planted in churchyards by the Normans, or maybe the Saxons at a stretch.

My latest dive into yew lore is The Ancient Yew: A History of Taxus Baccata, by Robert Bevan-Jones (Oxbow Books, Oxford 2017). The author is amazing in his comprehensive assembly of the evidence. I think it is all there as well as can be gathered. There are extensive, footnoted sources. However, the writing style is a bit jumpy as is the presentation of the evidence. Bevan-Jones is strongest in his theme that the churchyard yews are "at least" 1500 years old which places them right at the time of the establishment of Christianity in Britain by the Celtic Saints. He first discusses the botanical challenges of the strange growth patterns of the tree and then presents the best estimates by charts and graphs to support his Celtic-Saint-planting theory.

But then came the Iceman. In the final chapter, "Yew: an Archaeological Perspective" (which perhaps should have come earlier at least in a chronological sense):

My Heroes: Widtsoe the Apostle and Vaughan the Silurist

While searching the online version of the British publication of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Millenial Star (1840-1970) for any trace of the Vaughans, I found a couple. Serendipity has its day because it was my distant cousin, Henry Vaughan the Silurist, Metaphysical Poet of the 17th Century. Apparently, LDS Apostle, John A. Widtsoe was a fan.

Just the other day, I was thinking on these same themes, the eternal nature of man and woman and the gift of Agency! And here is Widstoe and Vaughan right on point. I'll just let Dr. Widtsoe take it from here:

Emigrant Departure from Waterloo Docks, Liverpool, 1850

The bad news is that the Waterloo Dock in Liverpool was significantly modified in 1868 and is now blocked off by apartments and offices. But we know where it was at the lower end of Waterloo Road just north of Prince's Dock.

The good news is that I found an 1850 article from the Illustrated London News about emigration from Waterloo Docks. Grandma Elinor embarked on the Enoch Train from Waterloo Dock in 1856 for Zion. It couldn't have changed that much in six years.

The article is mostly about Irish emigration because of the potato famines and general conditions of abject poverty. There are important confirmations in the article that ships sailing to and from the United States used Waterloo Docks and that steerage passengers were boarded 24 hours ahead of sailing to be organized below decks and likely to clear space before the saloon (first-class) passengers boarded.

More on Historical Mormon Emigration from Liverpool Docks

Anonymous D and I continue on our project to link up the Mormon Emigration departures to the specific docks at Merseyside in Liverpool, England. D has linked up some old maps with new, public digital maps. We plan to have the docks linked and listed with the ships that departed from them.

Recently while Googling around the Liverpool waterfront, I found four dock markers that are visible to passers-by, possibly in a tourist coach along the Mersey. The route swings by new condos on Prince's Dock where Heber C. Kimball leaped ashore in 1837 then on to Waterloo Road.

We are happy to share with all. I think it would be most fun to take people there, perhaps a coach passenger would be seated high enough to see over the walls into the dock areas. Here's the map:

South to North from the wonderful Liverpool Waterfront public places, we could circle 'round Prince's Dock. Then on Waterloo Road, we could see the old stone markers for Victoria and Trafalgar Docks (across from Costco):

Ghosts of Missionaries Past

In Dickensian fashion, the missionaries of the Restored Gospel to the British Isles noted the great calamities resulting from the rich oppressing the poor. Their work began in 1837. I will quote them using as my source Truth Will Prevail: The Rise of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the British Isles 1837-1987, Editors: Bloxham, V. Ben; Moss, James R.; Porter, Larry C. (LDS, University Press, Cambridge, England 1987) (TWP). I will attempt to transcribe the quotes as the missionaries wrote them leaving out the [sic]s and original sources:

Heber C. Kimball:

Wealth and luxury abounded, side by side with penury and want. I there met the rich attired in the most courtly dresses, and the next minute was saluted with the cries of the poor with scarce covering to screen them from the weather. Such a wide distinction I never saw before. TWP, 52.

Oh! When will distress and poverty and pain cease, and peace and plenty abound? When the Lord Jesus shall descend in the clouds of heaven - when the rod of the oppressor shall be broken. 'Hasten the time, O Lord!' was frequently the language of my heart, when I contemplated the scenes of wretchedness and woe, which I daily witnessed, and my prayer to Heavenly Father was, that if I had to witness a succession of such scenes of wretchedness and woe, that He would harden my heart, for those things were too much for me to bear. This is no exaggerated account: I have used no coloring here. They are facts which will meet the Elders of Israel when they shall go forth into that land [Britain], and then I can assure them that they will not be surprised at my feelings. TWP, 53.

Worse than Benedict Arnold

Benedict Arnold in Continental Army Uniform

It could be argued that Benedict Arnold was simply loyal to King George III as the king still claimed sovereignty over the American Colonies and had sent an occupying army to suppress a colonial rising. And fortunately, General Arnold's plan to deliver the fort at West Point on the Hudson was foiled by exposure of the plot.

I suppose one could also argue that Individual 1 is merely loyal to his highest interest, his own view of a great America with him at its head. It all revolves around him and it's all in his head under that mass of highly controlled hair cover which must take so much work it helps explains why the rest of his appearance is so slovenly.

Remember

Last March, I was privileged to visit Hereford Cathedral when the weeping window of poppies was on display in commemoration of the one-hundredth anniversary of World War I. It was raining.

The SS Nevada of the Guion Line, Liverpool to New York, 1886 and 1887

The SS Nevada of the Guion Line or the Liverpool and Great Western Steamship Co.
Oil painting presumed to be by James Douglas, in the Mariners' Museum, Newport News, Virginia

Sometimes, playing around on Google pays off. I found this image of an oil painting from the Mariners' Museum in Newport News, VA. It is the ship that brought my Great Grandfather George Robert Vaughan and his family to America in 1887. His father, Thomas, arrived a year earlier on the same ship.

The color and detail are so helpful. Note the two rows of portholes along the line of the hull just above the water line. One of those might have been opened during calm seas to get some fresh air to my infant Great Grandfather. The black smokestacks with the red stripe were distinctive of the Guion Line.

The ship had only one propeller which necessitated the sails in case the engine failed. Steamships were soon outfitted with two engines and screws for additional speed and if one system failed, there was another for backup rather than having to rely on the sails. This artistic representation is a bit fanciful as the sails were rarely used especially if the ship was at full steam as appears here.

The Nevada was built at Palmer's Shipbuilding & Iron Co., Jarrow-on-Tyne outside of Newcastle, England in 1868. That was the same year that Mormon emigrants began using steamships rather than the slower, less-expensive and soon outdated sailing ships. Steamships were coming into their own just as the transcontinental railroad was close to completion across the United States. Steamships and railroads greatly facilitated and expedited the journey from England to Utah. The Guion line became the preferred company for organized Mormon emigrant passage because of the favorable treatment and reduced fairs arranged between the Guion agents in Liverpool and the Church leaders of the British Mission. The Mormons were organized and orderly passengers generally respected by the captains.

Meet Me at Alexandra Dock No. 3 on Saturday!

This just might work. If only it were Saturday, May 22, 1886, in Liverpool!

Ever the one to want to stand in exactly the same place where my ancestors have stood and to lead others to their ancestral spots, I had to know where the actual dock was where my Great-Great-Grandfather boarded the S.S. Nevada to come to America.

The Mormon Migration database is a great resource to find immigrant ancestors who came from Europe from the 1840s through the early 1900s. The Mormon immigrants were well organized by the British Mission with transport arranged at the lowest fares. The ships are documented with passenger lists and departure dates from Liverpool, England which saw no less than 1,695 Mormon emigrant ship sailings!

On my recent trip with Mormon Heritage Association, I found the Liverpool docks fascinating. Liverpool is on the Mersey Estuary with tides from the Irish Sea. The docks are not what I was used to in US harbors with piers sticking out into Elliott Bay (Seattle), San Francisco Bay, or the New York Harbor. Liverpool docks are more like rectangular pools of water separated from the Mersey by locks and short canals. As a tidal river, the Mersey mud is exposed at low tide. At high tide, the locks can be open and the ships enter and depart through the canals in or out of the various rectangular docks. "Sailing with the tide" now makes a lot more sense.

Canning Dock in the very nice public space of the Liverpool Waterfront.

The Mersey at low tide with mud exposed outside the docks.

Sir Walter, the Scot

The Death of Morris the Spy, by Camille-Joseph-Étienne Roqueplan (1827)

Edinburgh fascinated me on my first visit before I knew I was destined to be a tour consultant. Navigating the Escheresque street levels of the old city was playing three three-dimensional chess. Even digital Google maps couldn't straighten that out. And monuments to Sir Walter Scott were everywhere! No wonder the Scottish Nation loves him as reality superseded fiction when he was the one who found the crown jewels of Scotland hidden in a chest deep in the dungeons of Edinburgh Castle!

More confident in my Welsh experiences, I have much to learn about Scotland. (And I'm still learning all I can about Wales!) I thought it necessary to do a bit of literary study of the great Sir Walter having only read Ivanhoe, when I was much younger and more prone to adolescent dreams of knights and fair damsels offering only unrequited love. Ivanhoe isn't much about Scotland either.

So I took it upon me to read the the Waverley Novels. Waverley was first thinking that would be enough or at least encompassed the Waverley oeuvre. But, no, all the Scott novels are supposedly in the canon. I next read Rob Roy thinking that will do it covering both the 1745 and 1715 Jacobite Risings. Scott is still an entertaining read, but he's no timeless Dickens. It is interesting that Scott was writing two hundred years ago and it's now over three hundred years since the rising of 1715!

Family History Connections in County Durham, England

Please note "5-mile" scale in key. This area is not large.

So I've been researching a bunch of ancestral sites for people going on our tour in a couple of weeks. I realized there is still a lot more work to be done for our own people.

Still kicking myself for not going north with my Aunt and Dad's Cousin in 2010, I will try to get there next summer. In the meanwhile, I am tracing Thomas and Isabella Vaughan who joined with the LDS Church in Stockton, County Durham in the early 1880s leaving for America in 1886 and 1887 respectively.

The 1871 Census finds Thomas still in South Wales working in his father's profession as a puddler in the ironworks of Abersychan. His first appearance is his marriage to Isabella Bowman in the Register Office, not a church, in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, England on the Third of August, 1875. They both gave their residence as Blue Row, which I assume was their first home. Sadly, Blue Row no longer exists. I did find an old picture of what it looked like:

Blue Row, South of Bishop Auckland, 1950s (from Facebook page on Bishop Auckland History)

Lord Nelson's Biscuit

Daniel Maclise: The Death of Nelson
Mural in Parliament, Westminster, London

There are times when I wished I had £3,000.00 to buy a biscuit.

Recently, an interesting lot came up for sale at Sotheby's and was then auctioned off again. It included what is believed to be the world's oldest hardtack biscuit. And not just any biscuit, but one belonging to an Able Seaman who fought with Admiral Nelson at Trafalgar.

And it gets better. The Able Seaman was my ancestor, the father of Mormon Pioneers!

The biscuit gets the news, but it is the other items that are of more importance.

That's one, huge biscuit, by the way!

Cymru, March 2018 XV, Hereford Weeps

Even if I was in Herefordshire for the day, I was still staying in Wales so it counts. And I found wonderful things in Hereford Archives and Records Centre (HARC)!

After exhausting my known sources, I sat on the banks of the Wye and had a late picnic lunch. This was the view:

Then I walked past and back over the old bridge

I wanted to see the Mappa Mundi and chained library. But they were closed as there was to be a funeral service.

Cymru, March 2018 XIV, Brecon Midst the Beacons

It rained hard that morning. As I still had a spot reserved at Powys Archives. After taking some pictures of where I thought my ancestor's flax fields might have been, I went back to check the indices and browse through the books on the shelves. Not having had enough time to digest what I had already found, I headed off to Brecon.

Pen y Fan, I believe, the highest peak in the Brecon Beacons.

Brecon is the old county town and I hadn't yet been and I needed to go. Unfortunately, the Brecon Museum is undergoing extensive renovations and is not open at present. I was still able to get a feel for the medieval city.

Aberhonddu

Cymru, March 2018 XII, Aberystwyth and Men of Harlech

"Aberystwyth" rolls off the tongue with just a bit of Cymraeg training. And it has been a running gag like "Basingstoke" since Shakespeare, but with fewer roundabouts.

And no joke, it is one of the most gorgeous settings for a national library!

Yeah, Aberystwyth! Who's laughing now?

There was a great tour of the facility. Cymraeg was on every tongue. And they helped me find the one document my Mentor had tasked me with. So, it was a great success and done by lunchtime. This August I'll be back for more time in the town, the sea, and hopefully, the library.

Now to Harlech.

Cymru 2018, April 2, Bank Holiday

Yes, the day after Easter is a bank holiday making this a big weekend in the UK. Many of the Sacsens were like, "Oh, la-dee-dah, let's go to Wales, Dear! I hear it's so quaint. They even have books now!" So they all pile into their Rolls or Auston Martins or whatever and drive on over to Hay-on-Wye, the Town of Books.

Ha! They don't even know where to park for free.

I KNOW!

I apologize profusely to my many English friends and ancestors. But I do know where to park in Hay. I also know where to use the loo without paying 20p. And if you have to pay, put your 20p in the handicapped or gender-free loos because they are much cleaner and actually function.

Cymru 2018, April 1 EASTER Edition

We're skipping a bit and I'll catch up. It's just that Easter is worth something on its own and out of sequence.

The sky was blue and bright this morning. Then the sun came over the Black Mountains (Y Mynyddeodd Duon). It was time to get up there. Originally, I had planned to go up on the Equinox and mark the shadow of our little standing stone. I was wise about the weather that day and stayed on lower ground. This bright morning, the shadow is still pretty close to due West, but then every shadow is, of course, with the sunrise. The question is, did our Neolithic ancestors know and mark that? You will see there is a rock on which the shadow falls. It is likely the standing stone was set straighter a few thousand years ago and most of the stones of the circle are missing, so who knows?

Still, the mountains were glorious!

Penybegwm (Pen-y-Beacon or Hay Bluff) on the left, Twmpa (Lord Hereford's Knob) on the right.

HARC! Research Results from Hereford

St. Mary's, Cusop, Herefordshire, with daffodils and yews.

The new Hereford Archives and Records Center (HARC) is an excellent facility! In ease of use and space, it surpasses the LDS Church History Library. And . . . they let you handle original documents! It was busy yesterday morning with a dozen or so patrons. And everything ran like clockwork in the new, suburban setting with large windows looking out into the woods.

Every archive has its own rules and style. HARC was much more efficient than any I have used to date. I have to say, though, that Powys's new facility is also very good, its staff most friendly and helpful, but it is much smaller. And Gwent Archives in Ebbw Vale still has my heart because the service there was the most personal and friendly. But that's the Valleys, it is.

The National Library in Aberystwyth is also very good and very professional. They also gave me some personalized assistance in the one task I was after. I now need to go back which I will do in August. But it is an intimidatingly formal place with its huge, stately appearance up on the hill with the fantastic view looking out over the town to the Sea.

They are all wonderful archives, even CHL. And I appreciate them all. But it was at HARC yesterday that I found Hannah again. And the Holy Yew continues to call.