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…
Author: Justin Durand
Joseph Bates Noble
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…
Was Her Name Elizabeth?
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…
Gärdserum Church
A few days ago I wrote about the Baptist church in Champaign, Illinois where my great grandparents Wilford Luce and Essie Wilson were married in 1898. Almost immediately I ran across a bookmark where I saved a link to information about the (Lutheran) church in Gärdserum, Sweden where another set of great grandparents Adolf Svanström…
Champaign Baptist Church
My great grandmother Essie (Wilson) Luce was raised in the Baptist church. She married Wilford Luce in 1898 in Champaign, Illinois, then moved west to Wyoming to take up life on his ranch. I was curious about the church where they got married. I was fairly certain it would have been a Baptist church, but…