Closing in on Elinor Vaughan's Grave

My wife graciously agreed to take an extra day home from Disneyland and by the long way so that I could visit Jacks Valley, Nevada, again. I tried a number for the Ascuaga Cattle Co. but they said it was the casino that had been sold by Mr. Ascuaga. I started calling US Forest Service offices to see if they had a contact at the Ascuaga Ranch. They passed me to several numbers where I left messages but got nowhere. I called the Curator at the Douglas County Historical Society with whom I had previously corresponded. She suggested that I just try going up to the ranch and explain myself politely to ask for access to the old cemetery.

It worked. The Ranch Manager came out and after I rattled off apologies and numerous names and dates belonging to my family and the history of Jacks Valley, he gave me Mr. Ascuaga's phone number and said that on his authority, we could go up to the old Winters Family cemetery. He said Mr. Ascuaga would be happy to allow us and to talk with me.

We went down the road and parked as directed, then walked up the hill on the wrong side of the fence. Finding a gate, I slipped through then pulled the gate post hard until I could slip the wire loop back over after my wife got through.

It was as beautiful as imagined. In the early evening the light was soft and the view was clear down over Jacks Valley to the larger Carson Valley. Snow was on the highest peaks of the Sierra.

In the Cemetery, by gracious permission of the Ascuaga Ranch

It is a relatively unknown, Mormon pioneer cemetery, or of pioneers who were Mormons as they seem to have left the Church or the Church left them when the call came in 1857 to return to the other side of the Great Basin facing a threat from the U.S. Army. These did not go.

Graveyard of a Surprising Hero

Free use courtesy of Jim Herman - Many thanks!

Elinor Jenkins Vaughan could be here! We know that her daughter died and was buried in Jacks Valley - also in an unmarked grave. It is very likely that Elinor was too. The earliest grave identified in this beautiful cemetery is from 1860. There is plenty of space and apparent depressions for lost grave sites.

Crime and Preachment

This is such a great newspaper find with Mormon Missionaries and possible family both referenced even if not directly connected.

Monmouthshire Merlin & Silurian, 21 June 1856

First the missionaries. There wasn't much information easily to find about Abednego Spencer Williams (1827-1896) born in Blaenau, Monmouthshire, except that he came to Utah in the 1880s, and is buried in Ogden City Cemetery.

There's a bit more for Israel Evans (1828-1896). His story reads like an overview of westward expansion. Born in Ohio, his parents joined the LDS Church and moved to Missouri when he was only five. They relocated to Nauvoo, Illinois after the expulsion from Missouri and then left Nauvoo ahead of the mobs to follow Brigham Young. Israel marched with the Mormon Battalion in the War with Mexico and was present for the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill. Instead of becoming a rich Californian, he went to Utah. He served a four and a half year mission to Wales and led a successful handcart company (only two deaths) to the Valley in the turbulent year of 1857.

The year before, 1856, when Elinor, Jane, John and family left for Utah, Israel helped the Welsh Saints who took the train from Abergavenny and provided a moving account in his journal. He helped the Saints load onto the S. Curling at Liverpool. Elinor had gone a few weeks earlier and sailed on the Enoch Train. John and Jane Vaughan Lewis were likely on that train heading out from Abergavenny and who knows which Vaughans left behind were there to bid farewell:

Family Totems III

A couple of weeks ago, I finally had a chance to show my first set of Family Totems and some other postings on my blog to my Dad and Mom and they were quite pleased. So here are some more:

"On the Road to Gettysburg" 1987. © Larry K. Vaughn

My dad had just started with watercolors in those days (after many years of acrylics and oils). He always was good with detail and powers of suggestion. You may have to zoom in to see but there are little blotches of orange in the green trees as this was a cicada-cycle summer in Maryland. The orange ties up with the roof and the farm implement in the barn. The yellow in the grass was emphasized as was the purple-blue of the barn for a good contrast.

This is a real place and is on the road to Gettysburg that our family (and Union Troops) took north many times. It's Highway 97, the Baltimore Pike. It hangs in our front room as a constant reminder of many good family adventures - and the preservation of our Constitutional Union through bloodshed and Lincoln's famous speech there.

Ordeal by Picnic

In Carson City for work, I can't help thinking as I do every time I'm here on these slopes heading up to the Sierras about the Donner Party. When I was only about twelve years old I read George Stewart's, Ordeal by Hunger, a classic history of westward pioneers who didn't plan or execute well and suffered disastrous consequences. My parents had that book and overhearing that it was some scandalous story, I sneaked a read and ended up awake all night until I could finish.

About the same time, we took a family trip and visited with some old college friends of my parents who lived in Reno. They took us to a picnic up at, yeah, Donner Lake. I couldn't eat a thing.

Trails Hurt and Heal: In Honor of Milton Smith, 1825-1846

I have a new idea which I think is original on the differences of understanding and perception among humans. At least I think I think it's original, so stop me if you've heard this one.

Santa Fe Trail cut just south of Cimarron, NM, north of Villa Philmont (through the low point of the fence line)

Could it be that the veil that separates us from the Spirit World works the same to cloud our individual minds and cut us off from each other's spirits in the here and now? Otherwise, we would more easily understand, and love, and have no further need for experience in this life to help us learn how to live the Lord's Charity with each other. Yet there are certainly those times where spirit connects to spirit and we understand things we cannot easily express in human terms.

Running the Galisteo River in Search of the Mormon Battalion Route

I finished last night's posting pretty late with the reference to running the Galisteo. When I thought about it this morning, I realized that was sort of an inside joke if only in my subconscious because, well, I wasn't exactly talking about white water adventures. As I started out with my love and respect for the rivers of the Pacific Northwest, the Galisteo isn't like them. I suppose the Santo Domingos appreciate the huge, monstrosity of the Army Corps Engineers Dam, because there have been flash floods that washed away parts of the ancient Pueblo which has been moved based on those floods. And I am sure there may be 500- or thousand-year floods that might actually float a boat. But in my experience, the Galisteo was for trail-running - on foot. Please note that the information for the recreation site above indicates no "water sports" "fishing" or even "drinking water." Remember, this is New Mexico.

We Explore the Battalion Route on Public Lands, Then I Help the US Give it back to the Santo Domingos

If you look closely at that map from the last posting, the route pretty much follows modern roadways with the glaring exception of that 24-mile, near marathon day from October 20-21, 1846. And if you look even closer, there is one very interesting geometrical configuration, a triangle, the apex of which points sideways, sharply at San Felipe Pueblo close to the number 21, and the narrow base of which is State Road 22 that intersects with the dark, thick line of the route right at another intersection of a broken line that forms the southern boundary of Santo Domingo Pueblo. I thought that might be a point on a map that I could find in real life.

The first time out there with my boys, and there were a few more to follow so I get the trips a little mixed up, I found the spot right on because the diagonal line at the top that intersects with SR 22 is the fence line of the Santo Domingo boundary. Just east and south of that intersection, I pulled over off of 22 and noted that yes, just to the east looked like ruts that went onto Santo Domingo. I did not go that way respecting the Pueblo's land. So I turned to the west on the BLM public lands portion and looked for something on the other side. It was a large, flat space, empty of vegetation other than course grass. I wandered a bit and got over to the edge where it dropped off into some piñon/juniper, and there it was! The old Camino Real that comes all the way up from Chihuahua City to Santa Fe and beyond to the first Spanish Settlements at San Juan, now, Ohkay Owingeh in its original Tewa name.

In which Marc Simmons and the Utah State Historical Society Come through for me.

Marc Simmons is a great guy and one of many interesting characters in New Mexico. I think per capita, New Mexico may outdo California, New York and even Utah for its eccentric characters. Simmons is a great popular historian who writes to explain things to regular people rather than impress the academic crowd. He lives fairly close to Santa Fe but rather far in an "off-the-grid" sort of way. At least when I had my minimal contacts a few years ago, he had no electricity, computer (a manual typewriter kind of a guy) or even a phone.  He picked up his mail at the newspaper office in Santa Fe, where I had left my letter, and with no moral aversions to the telephone (he just preferred not to have one) he gave me a call when he was in town.

 About the same time, I had come across a publication by Utah State Historical Society which was a detailed study of route of the Mormon Battalion Trail. (Yippee!)

Kokopelli Helps Find the Battalion's Way Down La Bajada asking the valid question, "Where's Waldo?"

Santa Fe occupies a beautiful location beneath the south end of the Sangre de Cristo, the Blood of Christ Mountains. However, it the old days, it wasn't that easy to get there. Between Albuquerque and Santa Fe is a very interesting escarpment called La Bajada, "The Descent,"or as I like to translate it, "The Big Downer." Going up is usually the problem as we found trying to make it up I-25 in our old Ford Escort, not a great ride even when coasting downhill. And the freeway climb, while steep, is much better engineered than the original highway demonstrated in this vintage postcard a friend gave me.