Projects

The main purpose of this page is to serve as a reminder to me of the writing projects I want to complete in the next decade or so. Unless I keep such things in the front of my mind, they tend to slide, and at my advanced age, I can't afford much slippage. Realistically speaking, it is likely that I'll never see some of them through to completion, but it never hurts to have goals.

You may note that the majority of the projects seem to involve male ancestors. There are a couple of things to be said about that. First, the biographies of Edson Barney, Henry Ashcroft and William Griffiths Reese will actually be family histories, and will include all I can learn about their wives and children. Each of them had two wives and it seems awkward to have three names in the title of a biographical work. Second, these men and women lived in an era where the men "made history" and the women raised children. Two of these men served as missionaries and left biographical sketches. One kept a journal most of his life. All have their names in the history books as having been church leaders (though, for the most part, minor ones) and as having engaged in other notable activities. I would love to write more about the women, but, except for a couple of very short biographical sketches, none of them wrote anything about their lives and most of the history books mention them only in connection with their husbands.

Biographies

Edson Barney (1806-1905). Edson Barney was my first ancestor to join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, having been baptized in 1831, less than one year after the Church was organized. He could be called the "Zelig" of Church history--he seemed to be involved in many of the incidents that all students of history know, yet hardly anyone knows about him. Among other things, Edson:

Was a member of Zion's Camp, a paramilitary march consisting of most of the men who would lead the Church for the next several decades. -- Was present at the dedication of the Kirtland Temple, where miraculous visions were received by Joseph Smith. -- Was a member of the First Quorum of Seventy, called in Kirtland. -- Invested in the ill-fated Kirtland Safety Society. -- Lived in Nauvoo and was serving a mission campaigning for Joseph Smith when the Mormon prophet was murdered. -- Became a polygamist. -- After spending four years in western Iowa, came west with the pioneers in 1840. -- Was one of the earliest settlers of Provo, Utah. -- Called by Brigham Young to lead an expedition to explore the White Mountains in eastern Nevada for possible hiding places during the Utah War. -- Was among the original settlers of Las Vegas, Nevada. -- Helped build the St. George Temple. -- When he died at age 98 he was commemorated as the oldest member of the Church and also the person who had been a member the longest.  

Henry Ashcroft (1833-1867). Henry Ashcroft seemed to be one of those people who are driven from an early age to make something of themselves. He was born in the village of Upholland, near Wigan, Lancashire, England. His mother was barely twenty years old when she gave birth; she was unmarried and never had another child. We know nothing about Henry's father. In 1849, when Henry was sixteen, he was baptized into the Mormon Church, apparently on his own initiative, as there is no record of his mother ever having joined. Five years later, just shy of twenty-one, Henry married a seventeen-year-old Mormon named Mary Glover. Two weeks later the two of them were on a Mormon immigrant ship headed for New Orleans. (The picture to the right is Mary Glover Ashcroft when she was much older.)

The Ashcrofts arrived in Salt Lake City on November 2, 1855, and they could hardly have picked a worse time. The summer had been infamous for one of the worst grasshopper plagues on record, and there was no miracle of the seagulls to save the crops that year. The winter was bitterly cold and a great part of the settlers' cattle herds were either destroyed or stolen by hungry Indians. The Ashrcrofts survived, however, and by 1860 they were among the pioneer settlers of Hyde Park in Cache Valley. A year later, Henry married a second wife, an English immigrant named Elizabeth Ann Barton. 

In 1867, when Henry was only thirty-three years old, he returned home from working in the canyon in a rainstorm. He contracted pneumonia and within a few days he was dead. Sadly, we can find no photographs taken of him. He left seven children; when he died, both his wives were pregnant. His wives each remarried about a year after his death (almost a necessity for a woman with children on the frontier) and each had additional children by their new husbands. Mary, my ancestor, stayed in Hyde Park; Elizabeth Ann followed her new husband to New Mexico. My story will follow both wives as they made lives for themselves in vastly different circumstances. 

William Griffiths Reese (1857-1958). In 1860, when he was two years old, William left Wales with his parents and baby brother to immigrate to Utah. After a decade in Hyde Park, the Reeses moved about seven miles down the road to Benson. As a young man, William served a mission to England and Wales, visiting many of his Welsh relatives when he was there. 

William returned from his mission and married a young schoolteacher named Mary Maria Rees (no relation to William). He became a teacher as well, though he eventually coupled that with farming. In 1898, when Mary was only thirty-three, she took unexpectedly ill and passed away, leaving five children. William was devastated, of course. He hired a young Danish woman to look after his children while he was away teaching school and she soon became his second wife. Her name was Karen Andrea Andersen; at the time of their marriage she was twenty-two years old, only ten years older than William's oldest child. She took over the raising of his children and, from what I've been told, was an excellent mother. Over the years she had eight children of her own, making the Reese family a large one, even considering the time and place.

When he was forty-nine years old, William left for a second LDS mission, this one to Australia. While there he served as the Australian correspondent to the Logan Tri-Weekly Journal, sending a letter for publication every couple of weeks. These letters make up the core of the book, News from the Antipodes, which I published in 2014. Although I included an introductory chapter in that book summarizing William's life story, I would like to do a book-length treatment and include the stories of his two wives and thirteen children.

Barbara Ashcroft Thurston (1916-2005). While I was able to work with my father to publish his life story before he died, my mother never completed her story. I tried to pry material out of her in the years before she passed away, but perhaps her illness (pulmonary fibrosis) had sapped much of her energy and desire. I was able to gather quite a bit of material about her childhood and young adult years and I would like to use this as a base point for her autobiography.

Barbara was an intelligent and well-read woman; had she undertaken the task, she could likely have written a more polished life story than my father. She was valedictorian of her high school (North Cache High) and went on to receive her BS degree from Utah State University. Not many girls who graduated from high school in those days went on to finish college, but my mother came from a family that valued education. Both of her parents had been schoolteachers in their early lives, although her father had become a dairy farmer by the time my mother came along.

Barbara taught middle school after graduation, but continued to attend the LDS Institute at Utah State. There she met my father, Morris Alma Thurston. Although he was still an undergraduate at the college, he was five years older than Barbara. These were the depression years and my father had not thought it was financially possible for him to attend college. He had worked several jobs after high school, but then, with the help of contributions from his ward, served a mission to the East Central States. His mission gave him the confidence and drive to go to college.

Morris and Barbara were married in 1941, just five months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the United States' entry into World War II. Morris was in his thirties, but decided to enlist so that he could serve as an officer in the Navy. Barbara, who was pregnant with me, accompanied him to Virginia where he underwent basic training. Of course, she had to stay in a rented room, but at least he was able to visit her periodically. She returned to her home in Hyde Park when it was time for the baby to come. I met my father briefly before he shipped out, but I was an infant and, of course, have no memory of it. I never saw him again until I was two and a half years old. 

Barbara went on to raise my five younger sisters and me. She was dedicated to her church and served in a number of callings. She was a natural teacher and was the instructor of the adult Gospel Doctrine class for many years. She was also the ward organist (my father was the chorister) and served a term as president of the women's Relief Society. She was the dominant influence of my early life. 

Charles Robert Ashcroft (1867-1923) and Eliza Marietta Woolf Ashcroft (1870-1952). Charles Robert Ashcroft was the son of Henry and Mary Glover Ashcroft. He never knew his father; Mary was pregnant with him when Henry took ill and died of sudden pneumonia. 

Retta, as his wife was called, was the daughter of James Woolf and Emma Hurren. Her mother had walked across the plains with the famous, but ill-fated, Willie Handcart Company.

My book about Charles and Retta will likely be a short one as I don't have as much information to start with. However, what I do have is interesting. Charles served a mission to California and Arizona in the first decade of the twentieth century. There he rode in his first motorcar and was a spectator at the first air show to be held in Southern California. Their home was across the street from my grandparents' home. Charles died long before I was born, but I apparently knew my great-grandmother well when I was an infant living with my mother in my grandparents' home. She was an important influence on my mother.

Memoirs

Mission Memoir (1962-65). Everyone who has ever served a Mormon mission remembers those years as being among the most significant of their lives. Most refer to it as the "best two years," but that tends to be in comparison with those that preceded them, so perhaps it is an unfair comparison. My mission, however, played an important role in shaping who I was to become. It refined my ambition and taught me what I could accomplish if I set my mind to it.

I served in Norway for two and a half years, from September 1962 to March 1965. I learned to deal with cold and dark winters, a populace that, for the most part, was ambivalent about religion, and a variety of companions. These were the only years that I kept a journal, although it was not very well done and I am a bit embarrassed to read it. However, I would like to memorialize these years that were so meaningful to me, particularly since I have been vocal in urging others to write their life stories. I already have a good draft--I just need to raise this project to the top of the heap and start polishing it.

Prop 8 Memoir (2008-13). In late June of 2008, a letter from the First Presidency of the Mormon Church was read in all Sunday meetings across the state. The letter concerned a proposed amendment to the California state constitution, known as Proposition 8, whose ultimate purpose was to deny to gay people the right to marry. The proposition was in response to a ruling by the California Supreme Court holding that Proposition 22, which created a law to the same effect, was unconstitutional. In the June letter, the presiding brethren of the LDS Church urged the members to

"do all you can to support the proposed constitutional amendment by donating of your means and time to assure that marriage in California is legally defined as being between a man and a woman. Our best efforts are required to preserve the sacred institution of marriage."

In later years some leaders would proclaim that Prop 8 was never intended as a "litmus test" for membership and that Mormons had always been free to follow their conscience, so far as political matters were concerned. In the fall of 2008, however, the admonition coming from the First Presidency felt very much like a loyalty test and I personally knew people who were released from their callings and had their temple recommends taken away because they opposed Prop 8. Of course, most LDS Church members rolled up their sleeves without question in support the proposition. Millions of dollars were contributed by them (much more than any other religious group) and millions of hours were donated, with Church members going door to door in most neighborhoods, scouting out those who were likely to vote in favor of the proposition, and then making sure they got to the polls. These efforts paid off in November, as the proposition passed by a narrow 52% to 48% margin.

I was distressed when I heard the letter read in our Sacrament Meeting. As I saw it, we should not try to dictate to others how to structure their marriage relationships. Of all religious groups, we should have been most sensitive to this, given our history of suffering persecution because of our practice of polygamy. I also failed to see how prohibiting gay people from marrying each other would destroy "the sacred institution of marriage." Certainly the greater threat to that institution was the widespread practice of unmarried heterosexual people living together and producing children. As the campaign unfolded, I was particularly concerned by some of the campaign literature that contained misleading and homophobic arguments.

One example of this was a flyer called "Six Consequences if Prop 8 Fails." Most of the so-called "consequences" were legal in nature and most of them were not consequences at all of Prop 8's passing or failing. I felt it was my duty to rebut these arguments, which I did by preparing a written "commentary." I wanted to protect the Church from the inevitable backlash if such dishonest tactics continued to be used in the campaign, so I sent my commentary to the Church legal offices. 

Over the next several years I had a number of interesting interactions concerning Proposition 8 and became known as something of an expert on the legal issues surrounding it. I had an opportunity to speak at conferences at Utah Valley University (where the photo above was taken), Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and Sunstone. I also appeared on several radio programs. I would like to write a memoir of my experiences while they are still somewhat fresh in my mind.

-- Morris Ashcroft Thurston