I wonder what I can say about Earl Durand that won’t throw me back into the family storm. Again. Supposably, Earl Durand was my grandfather. But I don’t believe it. On good days I think of him as a sort of ancestral godfather. On my bad days I think of him as just a PR piece for my dad’s very romantic life. I found a letter a few days ago from my dad. He wanted me to change my...
Mental Maps, not mind maps. Mind maps are something different. Peter Moskowitz, author of How to Kill a City, says, “A mental map is just your own personal geography of the city and all of its personal and emotional attachments.” In other words, we carry a picture of the city in our heads. It’s our own map, one we create as we live in it. It includes, not just places and their relationships...
I count on High Country News for compelling stories about my Western homeland but I don’t always get to the articles right away. I had this one marked to come back later but somehow it’s been over a year — Nick Bowlin, “How Mormon history helps explain today’s public-land fights” (Apr. 13, 2020). It’s got Mormon history, which would usually put it at the top of...
I’m reading Joseph Bates Noble: Polygamy and the Temple Lot Case (2009). Goodreads says: “In 1892, a deposition was taken in a Salt Lake City courtroom to gather evidence in a land ownership battle between two offshoot branches of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) The dispute centered on ownership of land purchased to build a temple, known as the Temple Lot...
I wrote a post recently about my 2nd great grandmother, Annie Noble Luce. I had occasion to look at and link to the entry about her in Book of the Pioneers. She says there her parents were John and Elizabeth Quarmby. We had no information beyond that until her grandson James Marker (1899-1980) decided to tackle the problem of tracing her ancestry. He preserved from his mother Hattie (Luce) Marker...