Whatever the definition of “ethnicity”, it does not fit comfortably into any of the present or past political boundaries of modern countries.
Here is some food for thought.
Updated to add link.
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 first pioneers. No Luces. I was deeply disappointed. I was sure there was a Luce who should be there.
There is a funny thing about this statue, I can’t resist mentioning. A bit of irreverent local doggerel says, “There stands brother Brigham, like a bird on a perch, with his hand to the bank, and his ass to the church.” I was more than a little scandalized the first time I heard it, but later I decided to take it in good humor. As an ironical nod, I opened an account at that particular branch of Zions Bank. And as a reward, I felt like I was part of the web of old Salt Lake every time I went there.
It was many years before I found out I was right. John Grant Luce‘s name should appear on the monument. The fact it doesn’t is due to a (now) well-known mistake. John Grant Luce was confused with Franklin G. Losee.
Where did I get the idea one of the Luces arrived with the first company? I don’t know. All these years and I’ve never found any note to show that I had heard something like that. As far as I can find, the mistake wasn’t actually discovered until 2015. Probably I was just wrong about what was known at that time.
Edited May 27, 2020 to repair link.
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 English mission. There is no evidence in family tradition or written sources that Stephen Luce served a mission in England.
I wrote to the experts at the BYU Family History Center. They didn’t say it can’t be right, but they did say there’s no evidence. The person who typed that card might have made a mistake on the date. Woodruff’s journal has a fairly lengthy entry for 9 April 1840 but no mention of Stephen Luce or of ordaining anyone.
So, we backtrack.
BYU pointed out that Stephen Luce was ordained a Teacher by Woodruff on 13 April 1838 in Vinalhaven. The event is recorded in Woodruff’s journal. His brother-in-law Nathaniel Thomas was ordained a Priest at the same time.
Stephen and his wife Mary Ann (Nancy) did not join the Mormon exodus from Maine in October 1838. Woodruff named the people who traveled with him in a journal entry dated 4 October 1838. The family of Stephen’s brother Ephraim Luce was part of the company. Stephen and his family were not. (We can guess the reason. Nancy was in the advanced stages of pregnancy. She gave birth to Wilford Woodruff Luce in Vinalhaven on November 9, 1838, just a few weeks after the company departed.
If Stephen and Nancy didn’t travel with Wilford Woodruff to Nauvoo in 1838, it seems likely they arrived there in 1839 or 1840.
I recently discovered Stephen was in Nauvoo in July 1840. On 18 July 1840 Phebe Woodruff wrote to her husband about the death of their small daughter. She died at their home in Montrose, Iowa. They took her body across the Mississippi River to Nauvoo for burial. In the letter, Phebe mentions in passing that Stephen Luce had agreed to make a little fence around the grave. Telling the story, writer Laurel Thatcher Ulrich describes Stephen Luce as “a friend from Maine” (Ulrich, 49).
It seems unlikely Stephen Luce had traveled to England on the mission with Wilford Woodruff, then returned before Woodruff did, particularly when there is no evidence that he went to England at all. I’ve written to BYU again. Perhaps they can locate the record of Stephen Luce’s 1840 ordination.
Why are there different spellings for Scandinavian patronymics? Jackson Crawford gives the short answer.
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 Israel.
“In 2006 [Andrew Collins] wrote a book titled The Cygnus Mystery . It proposed that humanity’s belief in the soul transforming into a bird at death has since time immemorial been focused around key animistic forms and a certain area of the night sky. Key to these ideas was the swan , connected not just with shamanism and animism for at least 25,000 years, but also arguably with cosmological beliefs surrounding the stars of the Cygnus constellation , and the Milky Way in its role as a road or river to the afterlife.”
Read More: Wing Bone Indicates Swan Shamanism Could Be 420,000 Years Old!