Earliest Foys to Join the Saints

Memorial Day

Yesterday the cashier at Staples politely asked me what my plans were for the Memorial Day weekend. I told her I would be going to the cemetery to decorate the graves. She smiled at me pityingly and then continued to ring up my purchases. Since Memorial Day also marks the beginning of the summer vacation season, she must have felt sorry that I had no barbeque or boating trip planned. When I was growing up, I would meet Grandma Barker early in the morning to help her fill the large funeral baskets with blooms freshly picked from her garden. She would cut and I would arrange and then we would take them to the Kaysville Cemetery where we would findwhole families out cleaning the headstones and arranging peonies.

I can't speak for the rest of the country, but in Utah the cemeteries are filled with pots of mums and vases of iris placed on graves of all the ancestors. We called it Decoration Day and may have roots in the southern tradition of holding a religious service and eating a potluck picnic at family grave sites after decorating the grave.  That's my Memorial Weekend.

As my grandchildren help me locate the graves in a bit-too-rambunctious treasure hunt - there is always one grave site that will not be easily located, I remember the earliest family members to be baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint. Some sailed from Liverpool or Bristol, some migrated from New England. I think of them crossing the plains and the words of the Battle Hymn of the Republic come to mind. Were they not Christian soldiers, marching on to war? Can you not picture them gathered around a hundred circling camps in the fire and lamp light? My grandson, Brooks, who is on a church mission in West Virginia, challenged his mom to search out the first members in each family and find where and when they were baptized. For you, Brooks:

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,

They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;

I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:

His day is marching on.

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

His day is marching on. 

None of the Foys, Finks, Binghams, Freemans, Gates, Farrs, or Plumleys were buried in the Kaysville or Bountiful cemeteries so I was not able to visit their graves this year. They traveled to the Salt Lake Valley and then were called to settle Zion throughout the west.

                   Foy & Fink

William Bosley Foy 1837-1920; Born in Pennsylvania; Baptized 1845; Pioneered in 1850 with Snow-Young Co. – age 12. Died in Colorado.

Thomas Birk Foy [father of William Bosley Foy] 1802-1873; Baptized 1842 in  Pennsylvania by Erastus Snow & William Bosley – Endowed in 1846 in Nauvoo; Patriarchal blessings from Hyrum Smith, John Smith & Isaac Morley; Pioneered in 1850 with Snow-Young Company – age 47. Died in Washington County, Utah.

Catherine Fink [wife of Thomas Birk Foy] 1809-1870; Baptism probably 1842 at the same time as husband. Pennsylvania - Endowed 1846 Nauvoo; Couple sealed by Heber C. Kimball in the home of Willard Richards, Winter Quarters. Received patriarchal blessing from Hyrum Smith; Pioneered in 1850 with Snow -Young Company - age 40 - when she contracted cholera. Died in Minersville, Utah.

Bingham & Gates

 

Lucinda Maria Bingham [wife of William Bosley Foy]. 1849-1924; Born into church membership in Salt Lake City, Utah. Died in Colorado.




 
 Erastus Bingham, Jr. [father of Lucinda Maria Bingham] 1822-1906; Baptized 1833; Called to build roads for the trek west. Joined Mormon Battalion to California and then back to Salt Lake Valley soon after the advanced company arrived. Met his wife and parents in Wyoming on the way west. Died in Arizona.

  

Olive Hovey Freeman [wife of Erastus Bingham, Jr.] 1820-1905; Born in Vermont; Baptized ;Endowed 1846 Nauvoo; Pioneer 1847 Spencer-Eldredge Co. – age 27 - being ill when husband found her on the plains of Wyoming. Died in Idaho.

Erastus Bingham, Sr. [father of Erastus Bingham, Jr.] 1798-1882; Born Vermont ; Baptized 1833; Brought family to Far West, Missouri. In 1846 driven from Missouri to Illinois where they lived until 1846. Pioneered in 1847 with the Spencer-Eldredge Co. – age 49. Died in Weber County, Utah.

Lucinda Gates [wife of Erastus Bingham, Sr.] 1797-1874; Born New Hampshire ; Baptized 1833; Pioneer 1847 with the Spencer-Eldredge Co. with extended family – age 49. Died in Ogden, Utah.

Thomas Gates [father of Lucinda Gates]  1776-1851; Born in New Hampshire; Married in Vermont; Baptized 1833 and then went with family to Kirtland, Ohio, in 1836. Subsequently moved to Far West, Missouri, in 1836, but was evicted by mob rule, escaping to Illinois 1839; Endowed 1845 in Nauvoo; Pioneered in 1847 with the Spencer- Eldredge Co. – age 71, widower. Died in Salt Lake City, Utah Territory.

Patty "Lucy" Plumbley [wife of Thomas Gates] 1776-1845; Born in Vermont. Baptized 1833; Her son, Jacob, became one of the first seven presidents of the Seventy and was imprisoned in Richmond for three weeks. She was called with husband to serve a mission as branch president, location unknown. Died in Nauvoo. 

Isaac Farwell Freeman [father of Olive Hovey Freeman] 1795-1843; Born New Hampshire ; Baptized prior to 1846 when he was sealed to spouse in Nauvoo; Died in Nauvoo  before making trek west.

Lydia Farr [wife of Isaac Farwell Freeman] 1799-1827; Born and married in Vermont; Died in Vermont prior to meeting missionaries.

Sources:

http://digitalheritage.org/2010/08/decoration-day/ 
http://thestonerabbit.typepad.com/the_stone_rabbit/gardening/
Family Search and Ancestry online family trees

High Water on the Colorado

This post is to satisfy the curiosity of my nephew, Pete Webb.

This month Google Earth just launched a street view of a ride down the Colorado River. Since Pete used to work on a rafting crew near Moab, he posted the link to Facebook where I offered him the story of Grandma and Grandpa Foy's death-defying trip down the Colorado in 1936. Here it is, Pete, and those adventurous types in our family.

Left to Right: Leslie, Inez, Lola, Jean, Julia, Florence on the red rocks of southern Utah

From Florence Foy’s history:

 "One day [Leslie] was going to take a man and Grandpa (Tommy) down the river to blast some rock off the cattle trail to make it wider. Jean and Lola were in Bountiful picking cherries. Florence said, 'Oh! Let me and the little ones go with you.' He said the mosquitoes were too bad, but Florence said she would dress them so as to protect them. Soon as the boat pulled out of Millcreek onto the river, she knew she had made a mistake. The river was high and one big whirlpool after another.

"They made it down to home base and landed and had dinner. When they started back, the river was rising fast and the current took them right into the middle of the stream and the motor stopped. The most terrified look was on Leslie’s face, as he was the only one that could swim. The boat was going with the current. They had no oars, just a pole to push the boat off sandbars. He said, 'Don’t panic.' Then he pushed and pulled everything on the motor. He then  began poling to get them out of the current. When they got near the shore, he said, 'if you can read a willow, work your way up it hand over hand.' Florence did this until the boat was close in to shore. Then Leslie finally go the motor started, but they stayed close to the bank the rest of the way."

From History of Leslie Thomas Foy by Florence Howard Tuttle Foy

"The children were now getting older and he would take them down the Colorado River from Moab for our cattle on the Winter Range. The only way we had of getting to the ranch was by boat, or by horse back which was over slick rock and cliffs of sand stone which was very dangerous.

Petroglyph panel along Potash-Lower Colorado River Scenic Byway (U-279)

 "I had never been down the river and was anxious to go as the Indian Hieroglyphics and Cliff Dwellings were quite a sight to those who were interested in that line - and I was. Well, one morning in June - the river was at its very highest having risen 7 ft. the night before. My husband was taking a man down to the ranch to blast off a ledge and some great desire made me want to go along. So I said, "Daddy, let me take the children and go too." He said alright as he was a man who never saw danger. We got into the motor boat with our little family of four children ranging from 8 months to 8 years [Julia, Inez, Leslie, Sarah.] As we left the side stream and started down the muddy Colorado I realized the mistake I had made as it looked like nothing but a large black whirlpool. We arrived okay, spent the day, and started back home in the evening leaving the man behind.
 

Photograph during an expedition down the Colorado River in 1909.

"As we got about 3 miles upstream the motor stopped. One look at my husband's face and I realized our danger. He told us not to get panicky and to sit still. We had no oars, just a pole to shove off from the bank and the river was so high he couldn't reach the bottom with it. At this place the current changed to the other side of the river thus throwing us out into mid-stream. You can imagine our feelings with four helpless babies and us in the middle of the great Colorado River during high-water. Under some miraculous or supreme power my husband managed, after what seemed hours, to get us poled close enough to the bank for me to reach out and get hold of the willows along the bank. Then he got hold and together we pulled the boat close enough that I could hold it while he fixed the motor. That fall a boat with 8 passengers was capsized during a cloud-burst and was sunk."

To read more about the Colorado River:
History of Grand County
Read about the first river running recreation sport trip.
Whitewater rafting in the 30s
Powell Expedition - National Park Service site


Sources:
*History of Leslie Thomas Foy by Florence Howard Tuttle Foy. © You may use text for educational or family history purposes with attribution only. Changing any portion is prohibited. 
*Photo of boat in rapids taken from the Featured Articles in Grandview This Week Newspaper Weekly Moment in Time Column.  Grandview Heights resident Julius F. Stone is shown here.
*Photo of petroglyphs from the Discover Moab site.