Walking over to the Lindsay side of the family

Haven't done a whole lot with the Lindsay branch of our family, so I thought I'd hop onto that limb today with a look at William Buckminster Lindsay, Jr. I should explain right up front that over the years I've tried two or three times to contact modern-day Lindsays via e-mail, asking permission to re-post items from their websites on our Henderson Family Reunion page, but have never received a response. (The e-mails weren't bounced back, so I'm sure someone got them; I guess they're just not interested in the correspondence. If anyone knows a member of the Lindsay family, please let them know we'd love to have them in here helping, commenting, showing us the way.)

So, I've forged ahead, given them due credit and haven't been asked to take them down despite all the copyright notifications on the Lindsay websites. I sincerely hope they don't mind.

As any of you know who've looked at the Lindsay pages linked to from our Henderson site, I've had photos up of Lindsays I had no way of identifying. But my visit last summer to Marsha's house provided me with plenty of information and I'm now in the process of matching names to the faces.

William Buckminster Lindsay, Jr., was born Dec. 25, 1821, in Jamestown, Canada, the son of William Buckminster Lindsay, Sr., of Vermont, and Sarah Myers, of Yorkshire, England. He grew up on "his father's 77-acre farm near Rideau Lake, Leeds County, Canada."

He joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at age 20 in 1842, and married Julia Parks on Feb. 19, 1845, in Nauvoo, Ill. (Julia and William Jr. were the parents of Julia Ann Lindsay, who married Hyrum Henderson; Julia Ann and Hyrum were the parents of my grandfather, David Monroe Henderson.) According to the account by Rex B. Lindsay/David J. Wardell, there exists an autobiography by Julia Parks Lindsay. It would be really nice to get a copy, or find out where we could get one to distribute to family members.

In 1846, as the Latter-day Saints were being hounded out of Nauvoo, William B. Lindsay, Jr. and Julia P. Lindsay were preparing to leave when he was called to serve as a guard for Brigham Young. This delayed Julia P.'s departure, and she stayed with her sister, Fannie, until

"there was another company about ready to start. I had the opportunity of going with my brother-in-law. I felt very anxious to go for I had heard that my husband was quite sick with the measles and I knew that he would be exposed to the cold and would not have much to comfort him and although I felt very loath to leave my dear sister, yet I felt it a duty to go.

"I started, but it being a very rainy spring, the roads were very bad, and I had traveled a whole week and never got into the wagon to ride, and some days we would only go two miles. I did not overtake my husband until I got to Garden Grove, and he was just getting so that he could work a little."

Then came polygamy. William Jr. married a second wife, Parmelia Charlotte Ann Blackman, "with the permission of his first wife, Julia."

Later, the family arrived in Utah, settling in Kaysville in 1853 (which, ironically, is where Samuel Henderson and his family first landed in Utah. But tragedy struck when "two of Julia's three children, all girls, were stricken with scarlet fever and were laid low by the hand of death in the fall of 1853."

William Jr. took a third wife, Sarah Elizabeth Henderson, in 1854. They all lived there about 13 years, and were farmers. In 1860, they divided into separate homes. And four years later, moved to the Bear Lake Valley.

In the fall of 1869, twelve of the family came down with typhoid fever. There were no doctors in the Bear Lake Valley at that time. Two boys died at this time. One was a ten year old son of Julia and the other was a six year old son of Parmelia. Both died within twenty four hours of each other. For three months the house was like a hospital and they did not know how ow whether they would be able to survive the ordeal. Minnie Lindsay Sorenson describes the conditions in the Bear Lake Valley in those first years in her history of William Buckminster Lindsay, Jr.

So, there's yet another history of William Jr. we should track down.

It's also worth noting that Julia P. Lindsay was the first Relief Society president in the area. Indeed, several years ago when Jan and I were vacationing near Bear Lake with our two youngest daughters, we visited the Paris, Idaho, storefront "museum" and our daughter Sarah noticed a large portrait of Julia hanging on the wall. And although the Paris Tabernacle was closed for renovations at the time, cousin Kathleen Wheeler had visited there a few years earlier and took photos of "hair flowers" in the tabernacle that included some of our Great-Grandmother Julia's actual hair. (It's an odd custom, I think, but one that apparently was not uncommon at the time.)

I think you'll find it all pretty interesting reading. I think it would be great to get access to those two books, too. Anybody have any information? Kathleen, is Julia's autobiography the one you said was available at the Daughter of Utah Pioneers museum?

Been a long time since I blogged and rolled ...

Has it really been since December that I posted anything on the Henderson Blog? I mean, I knew it had been a while, but December?

I apologize to one and all, but I've been distracted by life and haven't made time to do this -- one of my favorite things. But I feel invigorated, having recently spent the weekend in Cody, Wyo., with cousin Marsha Jones. We spent a night going through old family photos and histories and genealogy -- I'll soon be posting some of this at the Henderson Family Reunion website, and focusing on some specifics here on the blog.

Not only did Marsha put me onto some things I hadn't seen before, but when we attended the Burlington, Wyo., July 24th celebration I met up with Margaret Lafallotte, who is pointing me in the direction of a McIntosh/Caldwell coalition of family members who apparently have a treasure trove of family history, gedcom files and photos. So, we're on our way to more knowledge about our ancestors.

One of the curiosities Marsha and I pondered was the "discovery" that our great-grandparents Hyrum and Julia Henderson moved around a lot in the late 1870s and early 1880s. Theirs was the family unit that lost six children to a diphtheria epidemic in 1880 within three or four weeks -- this was before Grandpa Dave was born in 1883. The family was in Idaho in 1879, then Vernal, Utah, in 1880, then the Bear Lake, Idaho, region in 1881 and back to south central Idaho in 1883. We're hoping to come across some history that tells us why they moved so much during that short span of time.

In the meantime, I'll be visiting Vernal for work later this month, and plan to visit the cemetery where those six great-aunts and -uncles are buried to photograph headstones. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a local newspaper that was published in that area during 1880 that might help tell us the story of the deaths and/or possible wider epidemic. I'll keep looking.

Now, you're probably wondering who's in the photo. It's a young Grandpa Dave Henderson. I've cropped his image out of a larger one taken at what appears to be a campsite. It's just one of the little gems I brought home from Wyoming.

Grandpa Henderson's birthplace

When I was young, before the age of 5, Mom, Dad, Grandpa and I took a trip to Basin, Idaho, where Grandpa was born. I really have no memory of the trip, but I quizzed Mom about it and she said it was interesting for a couple of reasons:

There were two homes he lived in before he turned 17 and the family herded their livestock over the Continental Divide to Burlington, Wyo. The first, a log cabin where Grandpa was born, had long since been reduced to something akin to a barn for the animals of the area. When he saw that it was filled with manure, he said, "Hell, I wish we'd never have come."

Or, he said that when they went looking for the home he lived in after the cabin. It had burned to the ground sometime between 1900, when they moved to Wyoming, and the early 1960s when we made the trip to Idaho.

Mom says they visited a cemetery in Basin, Idaho, and happened to run into its sexton/caretaker. She explains that Grandpa, then at least 80, remembered very well the people who had lived in the community and where they lived. Though he did not know the caretaker, they had known the same townspeople.

Mom adds: "That's funny, because he could remember all them, but he couldn't remember my name."

Have a look at the photos, taken from faded slides, of the home where Grandpa was born by clicking here.

And, as always, please leave your comments by clicking on the "comments" button below.