Are names performative? That’s a new idea for me. I came across it while reading a book by Abu El-Haj about the politics of Israeli archeology: The author “specifies for the first time the relationship between national ideology, colonial settlement, and the production of historical knowledge. She analyzes particular instances of history, artifacts, and landscapes in the making to show...
I always loved the Episcopalian church in Eden, Wyoming but I always thought it was called Garden Church of Eden. Guess not. I did a Google search and quickly found it’s really called Oregon Trail Memorial Church. I wonder if the name might have changed. My grandparents Harry Swanstrom and Vivian (Luce) Swanstrom didn’t belong to any of the local churches, although they contributed to...
Here’s a brief article about the history of the Eden Valley. Staff Writer. “Eden Valley Wyoming; An Early History.” Wyo4News <wyo4news.com>. Nov. 5, 2017, retrieved Jan. 2, 2020. “The majority of the settlers came into the Valley in 1907 when a large scale irrigation project under the provision of the Carey Act funded by John M. Farson, Sons and Company came to the...
Harke Luse was named on a list of men able to bear arms at Scituate, Massachusetts in 1643 (Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Colony of New Plymouth, in New England (1857), 191). The list, dated August 1643, specifies “The names of all males that are able to bear arms from 16 years old to 60 years, within the several townships.” From this we can deduce Harke Luse was born...
I decided recently to have a Full mtDNA test at Family Tree DNA (FTDNA). This is something I’ve been putting off. I had the HVR1 test at Oxford Ancestors in 1998, and another at FTDNA in 2007. In between, I also donated a blood sample to BYU. Those results ended up at the now defunct Sorenson Molecular Genetics (SMGF). I don’t have enough matches to make this more detailed test useful...