When I moved to Salt Lake City in 1977 one of the first things I did on a day off was walk over to the Pioneer Monument on Main Street and South Temple. I wanted to see if there were any Luces on the list of the pioneers. The list is short, just the very…
Month: October 2019
Stephen Luce in Nauvoo, 1840
Stephen Luce must have been in Nauvoo in April 1840. I’m happy to have that piece nailed down. The confusion here is from an index card in the Early Church History Information file. It says Stephen Luce was ordained a Seventy on 9 April 1840 by Wilford Woodruff. That can’t be right. Woodruff was on his…
Scandinavian Patronymics
Why are there different spellings for Scandinavian patronymics? Jackson Crawford gives the short answer.
Ancient Swan Shamanism
From Andrew Collins at Ancient Origins. “The idea that the human soul might take the form of a swan to journey from this world to the next could be one of the oldest fundamental beliefs of human kind, or so suggests a new discovery from the 420,000-year-old cave site of Qesem near Tel Aviv in…
Colorado’s Mesa Verde
From Kevin Simpson at The Colorado Sun: When Swedish researcher Gustaf Nordenskiöld arrived at Mesa Verde in 1890 and surveyed the ancient cliff dwellings, he seemed to have the best of intentions. But his subsequent efforts to meticulously — and urgently — unearth and catalog the human remains and artifacts of the tribes who once inhabited…