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. 

Where I spend a lot of my time.

 

Am I less anonymous if I post a video of me in here? I'm far from an "internet sensation" and I couldn't even figure out Tic-Tok that well. The filming is pretty poor. This is maybe for posterity's sake, maybe to explain a little about myself. 

My Handcart Ancestor and Her Traveling Companion

 he evidence is pretty solid that our Elinor* (1789-1861) was the traveling companion of Mary Taylor Mayo (1791-1856) in their travels to America and on the Pioneer Trail. Mary is the one who died just short of South Pass on the Overland Trail. She died September 13, 1856, in Nebraska Territory and was buried in Oregon Territory when the Ellsworth Handcart Company stopped for the night at Pacific Springs.

There are two contemporaneous lists of the members of Ellsworth's Company that departed Iowa City on June 2, 1856. Neither one is in alphabetical order. The people are generally grouped by families. Interestingly, Elinor is not grouped with her daughter, Jane Vaughan Lewis (1827-1890) and her family. They travelled from Britain to the United States in different ships within weeks of each other. However, Elinor and Mary Mayo are listed together on both lists.

Art Comes Home from the Sea

My Dad's art is still in a bit of homelessness as he is with my Mom in assisted living and much of it is in storage. We are trying to help him decide where his art should go believing that it should be passed down through his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to be preserved through generations to come and not wind up in somebody's garage or a rummage sale. I mean, he signed his name on completed works and that should be respected down the generations and not forgotten. My wife recently came by a mountain landscape done by a great-uncle that has a family surname on it and the date of 1956. It will be preserved in family.

My sister had some pieces divided up for safe storage by display among our brother, herself, and me. We are trying to care for those and I had several pieces framed by the studio that my Dad prefers here in Salt Lake City. We found a lot of art in the dusty, mice-infested attic. One piece broke my heart a bit as I blew the dust off and passed a paper towel over the surface. I had the art dealer clean off the marks as best he could and frame with the closest to driftwood we could match:

I remember the day.

Welsh Pioneers to Zion

Sometimes the right book just drops in your lap at the right time. Well, I had to order it and going directly to the publisher rather than wait for Amazon got it too me a little quicker.

Welsh Saints on the Mormon Trail: The Story of the Welsh Emigration to Salt Lake City During the Nineteenth Century, by Wil Aaron, published in Wales by Y Lolfa is another book I don't have to write because it is better than what I could do. It has already been an aid to me in my current position as a part-time service missionary in the Church History Library (CHL) of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Church).  Whew! The author is not a member of the Church and is not compelled to the full typing requirements of the name. (I recently was making deliveries in the library and a worker unknown to me commented on a book I had with "Mormonism" in the title. She asked rhetorically and matter-of-factly, "We're never going to get rid of that name, are we?")

It is a highly entertaining read as the writer is a producer of music and television programs in Wales. He has the academic credentials as a professor of Music at Bangor University where I have delved into the archives on family history quests. And it's one of the best general histories of the Pioneer Trail and the settlement of the American West as its chapters are divided by years from 1847 to 1868, the range of the Mormon Pioneer Trail. Told by an outsider to the Church and the the American Experience, it presents a fresh vista of the story in a very accessible format.

Red-lining Systemic Racism - My Cities

One of my Welsh Professors, whom I have also hired as my estate-planning attorney, shared something on Facebook that I thought would be good to memorialize in a blog post. The links would be easier to find through my search box down on the lower right.

He linked some information and fascinating if disturbing resources on the practice of "red-lining" that came out of the New Deal in the 1930s. The Home Owners' Loan Corporation or HOLC was established to readjust home mortgages that were in default or needed refinancing. Major cities were mapped to indicate areas where loans were most at risk. The neighborhoods marked in red were the most risky based on economic conditions of the residents at the time and also expressly and explicitly by race and ethnicity. While the HOLC was abolished in 1947, these maps were used by banks and others interested in economic investment well into recent times. They helped to establish de facto racial segregation in all major cities not just the South where legal segregation flourished until the 1960s. The effects of red-lining are still with us today. You can read more here and here.

And, you can find the maps at the University of Richmond's "American Panorama: An Atlas of United States History."

My paternal line came to America in 1886. The first couple of generations lived in the lowest rated red-line districts of Ogden, Utah, classifications D-8 and D-9 for "Hazardous" with regard to investment.

Archaeology and Me, Part 2

918 A.D.
Her wærð Ecgbriht abbud unscyldig ofslegen foran to middan sumera on .xvi. Kalendas Iulii, þy ilcan dæge wæs Sancte Ciricius tid þæs þroweres, mid his geferum, þæs ymb .iii. niht sende Æþelflæd fyrde on Wealas abræc Brecenanmere þær genam þæs cinges wif feower ðritiga sume.

In modern English:
Here before midsummer, on 16 June, Abbot Ecgberht, guiltless, was killed with his companions. The same day it was the festival of St Ciricus the martyr. And three days later, Aethelflaed [Lady of Mercia, daughter of Alfred the Great] sent an army into Wales and broke down Brecon Mere, and took the wife of the king as one of thirty four [captives]. (from Swanton via Lane & Redknap).

This time we can be thankful that the victors wrote the history because this entry in the the Mercian version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (B) records the destruction of a royal residence that appears to have been confirmed by recent archaeological investigation. The thing is, some of my DNA was very possibly, maybe likely involved, if not at least present at least in some of the eyes looking over the nearby hills to the smoke from the burning.

Archaeology and Me

The images of body casts from Pompeii haunted me in grade school. I didn't help that we were in the shadow of sleeping Mount Rainier. It hasn't blown for a few hundred years, but St. Helens did.

Everything Egypt fascinated me and a few of us in about third grade had our own "Egypt Game" that we were going to be archaeologists. Not sure how I even came up with the word that I still have to spell check. Tutankhamun fascinated me and I saw his golden face in 1978.

Seventh Grade Science did me in when I met my first archaeologist, Dr. James Daugherty of Washington State University. We were on a Scout 50-miler hike on the Olympic Coast, Washington. We provided some service hours repairing and mucking out the settling ponds from the hydro-pressure water used in the excavation of a Makah Longhouse at Cape Alava that had been anaerobically preserved in a mudslide for almost 300 years. When pushed forward by my Dad to talk with Dr. Daugherty because I was interested in being an archaeologist, my 13-year-old little mind balked at his advice to study Science.

"Study Science, young man!"

Thanksmissioning!

Yes, I make up words now. Grammarians be danged, I'm old enough to set my own rules. "To mission" is now a verb. I go "missioning" on the days I am part-time, home-based, senior-service missionary.

John Needham (1819-1901) Grandma Elinor's Missionary.

And I love the Church History Library! I passed my one-month audition and had the enhanced tour that included the vaults. Pretty cool! And literally so as the sweet-spot temperature for archives is 50° (Fahrenheit) and 30% humidity. Then there's the even colder one at -4° to preserve film and photos.

The highlight was standing next to a stack of boxes that the guide said was full of stones found by the archaeologists while digging for the foundation of the restored Nauvoo Temple. They made up the original oxen supporting the baptismal fount. They have been digitally scanned and so that a replica of the originals can be reconstructed hopefully to be on display in the Nauvoo Visitors' Center. We could see right into the boxes. The urge was strong to reach out and touch as I did with George Washington's portmanteau a long time ago, but I slapped my hand as I don't want to be exiled in more than one way.

The work is challenging but fun as I piece together on my Excel spreadsheet the missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints called from the field in Britain, especially Wales, back in the early days of the Church. My spreadsheet is not at hand, but here are links to some that I have worked on:

Missionary Update, All Saints Day, The Grail Quest Fulfilled

Yes, I couldn't be happier with my senior service missionary experience. The Church History Library is amazing! I was trained on document delivery which I won't go into as we're all behind security barriers. I can assure you that everything is very well protected to the max. I agree there should be more and easier access to all, but I'm not in charge and I will attempt my long-suffering persuasion to the extent that I can.

It is the greatest joy that two themes in my life have merged and I find myself viewing the Grail after traversing the wasteland of my legal career. I'm finishing up Joseph Campbell's Romance of the Grail and all things become interrelated in his mythic synergy. Outside of his book, I still make connections as I near the Nirvana of the Ten Steps of the Bull. Here, I am at step 7. The Bull Transcended (Bull Forgotten, Self Alone).

Sort of a Mission Report

Finally made it into the Joseph Smith Papers!

No, that's not my assignment. And training on Monday put the fear of Something into me so I don't know what I can talk about. My assignment is not official and hasn't started yet but I think I will be able to use my Welsh. Yes, the Lord and a few other folk seem to know what they are doing. I've been sort of hyperventilating the past couple of days. I've got to calm down and get to work hopefully to meet my supervisor and work tomorrow. It seems it will not be appropriate to blog about much of it unless I can refer you to public sources of which I'm hopeful we will be producing more.

So, the Joseph Smith Papers. My direct ancestor finally made it! My wife's people and, therefore, my children's have been in since nearly the beginning with piles of stuff. Mine had to wait until Volume 9 of Documents and it's not all good news:

See image at JSPP here.

Yeah, good ol' Daniel!

The good news part is that he did appeal to the Nauvoo High Council and with enough affidavits of his friends to clarify the animosity against him, he cleared his name and was restored in the Church.

Mission Training Days 4 & 5: Go Forth!

Our Group of Senior Service Missionaries with the Mission Presidency front, seated.

Yesterday went well. I was just to tired to blog after a day of training then an evening at the local Family History Library.

It's funny (or not) how they tell you only parts of what is happening when you come to it. They did say there would be a week of training to start. And now we hear that we will need a week of training in our assigned areas. Basic retirement was a lot easier. But this is good. And I'm still done by 4:00 so I can come home and take a nap.

The trainers did really well on "Merging," of all things. No crying or general break-downs. It went a bit slow and steady so I found one of my own to merge thanking the Heavens for good Dutch records. Someone had put in an individual as a female reading "Cornilus" as "Cornilia." I could easily check Dutch sources wonderfully laid out on-line recently by the Dutch government to confirm it was a male. We learned some good search techniques too (surprising me a bit with FamilySearch as I usually search with Ancestry).

Mission Journal, Training Day 3

This ain't Paradise yet, Baby!

OK. I had church sexual-harassment training, so I'm not supposed to use the word, "Baby."

It had to be done twice, or maybe not. Remember that bureaucracy thing? I was doing just fine with the training on FamilySearch "Sources" and "Memories" picking up a few good tips as I tried showing off my prowess next to the guy who apparently wasn't just in advertising but was a software engineer and a certified genealogist. Sigh. Then the full-time "tech" Elders taught us how to get on to our new church email accounts for the Mission. Only it wouldn't work for the four of us sitting in a row right in front. We went from my buddy on the right to the nice Sister with a Welsh surname on the left and next to her another Sister with a Welsh surname whom I'm afraid to ask how she got it as she otherwise appears to be African-American. And we're all in this tech mess together.

The young Tech Elders took phone photos of our error messages and presumably sent them off to Church IT. When I got home, I had two emails from Church IT. One told me that I had to take annual sexual-harassment training. The other was to get my email fixed. As a former fed attorney that practiced personnel law, I couldn't resist the training. The online course was a little better than the fed courses. And the rules are pretty much the same. The main differences are that the Church can require a temple recommend as a condition of employment and church employees can date but have to report it to HR first. I don't think I'll try it because whatever HR were to say, my wife would likely object. Oh, and the temple recommend thing.

Mission Journal, Training Day 2

No notes today because it was all FamilySearch intensive with hands-on work. They have a very good teaching system of group lecture with an active screen showing what the instructor is doing while a couple of roving trainers watch and swoop in to assist those having trouble. Then at the end of a segment, a trainer comes for each of us for a one-on-one check through the concepts just learned. They are mostly friendly, too. Some are a bit harsh as former Jr. High School teachers or something. (Oops!)

In truth it seems so odd to serve a mission from 7:30 to 4:00 and be on pretty much the same commute I was on for work just a few weeks ago. I park on Main Street above the Conference Center where there is some free, all-day parking and I walk down the hill. So I don't cross that dreaded South Temple line into the "Great and Abominable" City. I had joked with one friend that I was joining the GAA CHL, but I think I was too harsh unless they're just being nice at training to suck me in. This just isn't a bad place to serve a mission!

The walk in from parking is pretty nice!

We are only on the Third Floor and looking out the window, I see this:

Mission Journal,1st Day Training

Discrete selfie before devotional.

It still seems so odd to be on a mission without a companion. There was a brief moment where I felt close to my first companion whose funeral I attended last Saturday. I also felt like Grandma Elinor was at my right shoulder. Someone told a story that I can't verify in anyway that a figure from church history was standing over her left shoulder offering spiritual guidance. As I said, Grandma Elinor is on my right.

The setting is much nicer than walking into old Knight Magnum Hall on the edge of  the BYU Campus. The Joseph Smith Building is the Hotel Utah and was quite something in the old days. We opened with the Monday Mission devotional in an old ballroom on the mezzanine level that is now a chapel. The "Elijah" Choir was very good. I could join if I want to hang around Wednesday evenings for practice - and show up for every Monday devotional, I guess.

The message was a presentation on the special projects of the Church History Library that has missionaries assigned. Interestingly, I know three people currently working on three different projects. A woman married to a guy who still works in my old office is on the Emmeline B. Wells project. A guy in my ward is on the Missionary Database, and his wife is on some secret project. I hope I don't get a secret project or these postings will be very short-lived.

Before the devotional, we were handed our missionary name plates and our ID cards. After, we went to the main lobby for pictures with the mission president and then over to the COB ("Church Office Building") for Security to take our pictures and connect them to our cards. Then it was up to the Mission Offices on the 3rd Floor to the training room, a few rows of computers with our name tags on them. I am right up front and center. There's a nice guy on my right, a former advertising man--and a nice sister on my left who apparently has never married because I asked about her Welsh surname. I said I could help her track them down in Wales.

Here are the notes from Sister Sara M. Fenn and then President Jerry D. Fenn of the Mission:

A Challenge to our Circumstantial Origins

We have been researching to break through the brick wall of a 1789 illegitimate birth in  Hay, Breconshire. That is our direct surname origin (although the numerous Vaughans in the Middle Wye and Usk Valleys all claim descent from Sir Roger Vaughan of Bredwardine, legitimately or not - and we connect with a few other of those lines).

This weekend, I had some correspondence on Ancestry.com with another user who took some umbrage with us naming her direct ancestor as the putative father of John Vaughan (1789-1851). She gave me permission to share it with her Ancestry user name. Here is the correspondence:

"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):

The Day Spring by Henry Vaughan, Silurist

On this Easter morn, I share another poem by my distant cousin, Henry Vaughan.

Religion, Superstition, and Rationality in Scotland

Book Report: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg (1824)

Flag of Presbyterian Covenanters, National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh

It's great to find a literary classic that I hadn't known before. Reading all I can devour about Scotland helps me be a better tour guide. This one intrigued me as it was listed as an odd book, a religious-psychological thriller that had served as inspiration to another Scot, Robert Louis Stevenson, in writing Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It has sword fights, murder, mayhem, and a couple of strange games of tennis. What's not to like?

The Holy Yew Becomes Holier

"That shady city of Palm Trees. . . ."

Palms don't grow in Britain. There are some surprising palmetto-types along the south and western coasts as the temperate climate is warmed by the Gulf Stream. And as Basil Fawlty explains, Torquay is the Riviera of Britain. . . .

So what do they use for Palm Sunday?

Yes, the Holy Yew!

My distant cousin, Henry Vaughan, knew this. And surprised I was to learn that when he wrote of the Palm Tree, it was the Yew! That poem makes so much more sense now so I share it here thinking of that peaceful resting place below the Yew in Llansantffraed Churchyard.