Pioneer Trek

Jim and I went on a Pioneer Trek with about 70 of the youth of our church. It was a reenactment of journeys nearly three thousand Latter-day Saints took across Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming to the Salt Lake Valley, from the years 1856 to 1860. They packed their belongings in a handcart and walked over a thousand miles. Our teenagers were organized into 7 ‘families,’ each with adult leaders as Ma and Pa. Over three days we trekked 15 miles through the woods of New Hampshire: not quite the Great Plains, but challenging.

I often walk 4-5 miles in a day, so I was actually disappointed that it was only 15 miles total: I had misunderstood it to be 15 miles a day. I did worry about sleeping on the ground: it’s been years. But we bought backpacking air mattresses, which are very lightweight and inflate in 15 breaths.

It was a fun date for Jim and me. As the company's grandma, I wasn't responsible for anything. Except for a slight rain Saturday morning, the weather was great and the rail-trail easy to follow.

Back home on Sunday, two of the teenagers reported to our congregation. One had been quite skeptical of the plan. He named it ‘cruel inefficiency’ to pull a loaded oaken handcart over dirt and rocky trails for three days. But in the end he was glad he’d done it.

For both of them, and for me, it heightened our appreciation of our pioneers. Everyone who has gone before is a pioneer, not only my great-grandfather James Farrell, who walked to western Nebraska and built a sod house, or my great-grandparents Bruesch, who came as children to Wisconsin from Prussia and homesteaded a wheat farm in Highwood, Montana, but my grandparents and my parents. Every generation has its own challenges and forges the way for the rising generation.

I’m grateful to have shared the trek experience with Jim and new-found friends. I’m grateful to live in beautiful New England. And I’m grateful for my parents, grandparents, and all pioneers, for the sacrifices they made to give me a better life.

Tending Eliza

I spent all of last week at RootsTech, the largest family history conference in the world. I attended presentations from 8 a.m. into the evening and learned about immigration records, German surnames (my two grandmothers were German), maintaining research logs, and helping others with family history.

I thought I’d write this week, while tending 15-month-old Eliza in southern California. What was I thinking? I’m staying with my sister and her husband, which gives me some breaks now and again, but Eliza's favorite activity is climbing the staircase. She crawls up fine, but hasn't learned the art of gracefully descending and insists on walking down, so I hold her hand. There's no child-gate and it's her go-to area to roam. Since she lives three thousand miles away, it’s precious time to be with her, but I do wish her once-a-day nap was a bit longer. Today I made the mistake of taking a long stroller-walk at 10 a.m. She slept in the stroller and her nap was shortened by an hour. Tomorrow's forecast is for rain. Thursday's game plan? Take my stroller-walk after her noontime nap.

Genealogy Heaven

Early last Tuesday morning, I joined about 40 other passengers to board a Southwest plane to Milwaukee. We each got an entire row to spread out in. Almost as good as first class!

In order to save the $400 premium for travelling on President’s Day weekend, I chose 11 hours of travel time to get from Boston to Salt Lake City, via Milwaukee and Los Angeles (yeah, California). Have Kindle, will travel! I remained on the same airplane all day and had a unique experience in Milwaukee. After refilling my water bottle in the terminal, the gate agent waved me through to re-board the plane before the waiting new passengers. I walked down the jetway alone and directly into my chosen seat: no line, no waiting. What a feeling of power and privilege, to board before anyone else, without showing a boarding pass. (I’m easily amused.)

That afternoon I rented a car and drove to see Savannah and dear little Eliza, who are visiting Utah from L.A. (I practically flew over their apartment building, but they weren’t there.) The eagles were gathering (Luke 17:37) for a double baby blessing for Eliza and her month-younger cousin, Leo.

Over the next two days, I spent over eight hours at the huge Family History Library (FHL) on Temple Square.

I had no idea what to expect: over the last nine years, millions of records have been digitized and are available, free of charge, from home through FamilySearch.org. What could the FHL have to offer?

What I found bowled me over: several floors, each with a huge corps of experienced volunteer genealogists, eager to guide me to the next level of research.

A seasoned genealogist helped me find an image of my great-grandfather’s handwritten baptismal record, dated October 27, 1860, from Poznan, Prussia, now part of Poland. There are records going back to 1558.

Another volunteer, experienced in Lithuanian and Polish research, introduced me to research tools for Polish locales. Amandus Gustav Bruesch and his parents, Gottlieb and Justine, spoke German, but his birthplace, Poznan, is now a Polish province, 100 miles from the current German border. I’ve daydreamed about visiting the Bruesch homeland: turns out I’ll have to travel to the middle of Poland.

With family activities, I won’t be able to return to the FHL this trip, but I’ll be back. Imagine an entire building of seasoned genealogists, united in their desire is to share their expertise.

Fort Benton, Montana

High on a windswept bluff in Big Sky Country, overlooking the Missouri River, my people are buried, including my dad’s parents, Logan and May Hazen, and May’s parents, Gustav and Augusta Bruesch. And now my cousin, Duane Allen Hazen.

Three years ago, we visited Riverside Cemetery, with my dad, who grew up near Fort Benton, then lived in New Jersey 63 years. When my dad died later that year, and his only surviving sibling, Uncle Herb, moved to Helena, I didn’t expect to return. Then Duane died unexpectedly. Jim and I were already planning to fly to Salt Lake City, so I bought a ticket for the Salt Lake Express to Great Falls. When I set my alarm wrong and woke up just as the van was leaving Salt Lake, Jim drove 80 miles to Tremonton, Utah, to catch it. The 15-passenger van arrived and I climbed into the only empty seat, which was sopping wet and directly under a leaky roof vent. Water dripped on me at every curve in the highway until the rain stopped and the vent emptied, but I was grateful to have a seat at all.

The memorial and graveside service were Saturday morning. Later that afternoon, I returned to the family plots and made a map. Wilbert Freddy Bruesch’s marker, flush with the ground, was covered with dirt, so on Sunday I borrowed a large stockpot and scrub brush from the church kitchen and returned once again. The red granite stone was hard to read: the raised letters are worn. They tell a sad story; my grandmother's younger brother, Wilbert, was five and a half when he died in March of 1913. Her son, Donald, died at age two in 1927. The club no one ever wants to join: my grandmother and great-grandmother lost sons too young.

Grampa's Travel Notebook

It’s a sunny July day and my sister, brother-in-law, brother Timothy, and Jim drive my 91-year-old father to the broken-down ranchhouse where he grew up. It’s outside of Highwood, Montana, east of Great Falls, abandoned in a golden field of wheat. Dad stays in the car, not wanting to disturb memories of his childhood home, but we walk down the pickup truck tracks over the prickly wheat stubble. Wearing capris and with bare ankles, I walk gingerly to avoid being stabbed by the sharp wheat stocks. My brother, Timothy, strides ahead of me in his boots and jeans, shaking his head at my foolish clothing choice. He spent summers here as a farm hand when he was in high school and loves the Big Sky Country. The old house was electrified years after it was built, but never had running water. The old outhouse (a two-holer) is tipped over in the back yard.

           In the distance, behind the old barn, some people are shooting targets with their guns. Walking around the house we discover the only way in, through an open window, and slowly climb in, avoiding the nails sticking up on the sill. The place is a mess, strewn with picked over magazines, random old feed company calendars, and animal droppings. Upstairs I discover three black student composition notebooks, the kind with the marbled cardboard cover and lined paper bound together with string. They were designed in the days before cheap metal spirals, though I still can buy them at Staples.
The first notebook is titled "State Routes Traveled" and the heading of page one is ‘Alabama’. Each subsequent page has a state name, all in alphabetical order. (There actually aren't any routes listed in Alabama.) My grampa drove all around the country with Gramma. Winter was the slow season on the wheat farm, which gave them the freedom to roam the highways.
I’m thrilled to find the notebook and flip through it with anticipation. What sort of travel journal did he leave? I find each page lists highway numbers and place names, nothing more. They are ledgers of every highway he’d traveled on. No motels, no historic sights or tourist stops, nothing but rows of highway route numbers and place names. Arizona: #69---Jct #79 to Phoenix. Maryland: #39---W Va line to Jct #219 US. Out of hundreds of entries four are dated: 1964.
           The second notebook is titled "Routes North & South Traveled" and the third "East & West Routes Traveled". I take the notebooks with me, thin reminders of my grampa and his travels.

I know from family stories that Grampa drove to each of the lower 48 and took a photo of the state capitol. In my childhood I saw some of those pictures. That gene has been passed down through the generations: I visited each of those 48 states with my kids in 1995. Our son, Matt, is halfway through running a marathon in all 50. He’ll run the Boston Marathon for Patriots’ Day on Monday, April 18th, in honor of David, as part of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. (If you want to know more, or donate to the cause, here’s the link: http://pages.teamintraining.org/ma/boston16/mjohnston.)

My oldest brother, Steve, tells me that Grampa Hazen drove much of Route 1. Here's a notebook entry:
#1 US                                                                                          Baltimore Md. to
              Columbia S.C.
               Daytona Beach Fla to Key West Fla

          He was a wheat farmer who worked hard from spring to harvest and then traveled in the winter when the work was done. He took a photo of every state capitol of the lower 48 and in retirement traveled to Alaska and Hawai’i to finish the job. There’s an “all of” project.