Hills and Hollows

Today was the Hills and Heritage Festival at Thurman, Iowa, a tiny farming hamlet about an hour south of Omaha.

Our flooding has closed some one of our main highways and is still evident, so we did a little dancing to get there, but the ride with John and Barbara was gorgeous through these beautiful rolling hills—the heartland of America.

The town itself was delightful, full of the quaint and the not so quaint--charming homes, some new, some old.

A picturesque old church, and a busy park full of people enjoying a reason to celebrate.

In honor of the event they had four Civil War reenactors fire the cannon every hour. It was a kick to watch. They were from the area and seemed most pleased to pose for us.

They carefully instructed us where to stand to get a good picture, but not in range of the huge retort. It was a good thing! After, Corporal DanGaard gave Barbara and me flash primers that were what lit the fuse for our Civil War buffs.

One of the soldier’s wives was also costumed for the occasion and was very pleased to show off her husbands weapons—a Sharp revolver and a sword.

We went to see three speakers who will be our guests at a big Pioneer History Conference we are hosting the end of October. We were also special guests it seems—at least they treated us to lunch. Nancy Newlon was our hostess along with Mary Howery.

This Festival included a whole section on family history so there were displays on genealogy, family histories, including the clever photo display by Mary Howery, as well as the history of Thurman and the surrounding area.

One of the most delightful people we met in Thurman, was a writer, Evelyn Birkby, who had been a radio homemaking broadcaster. They were very popular in my younger days. Her books included one about these radio homemakers, another about her growing up days on the farm, and the last, a trip to find her long lost relative in Scotland. All these books had her recipes sprinkled throughout.

There were three LDS speakers who were invited to come and present. Terry Latey is our beloved librarian at the Trail Center (who jokingly put on this pioneer hat for this photographer). She told all about a marvelous new web site for working on the history of this area, along with an introduction to other great web sites that are out there for pioneer history. She is really an amazing designer and was so pleased to have her new web site up and running.

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Another speaker was Bob Sharp (in the flag shirt with John, and Kevin Henson) who is a specialist on cemeteries. He has helped find over 100 settlements in the area and many of the burial grounds of the family members who lived there. He had great stories to tell of little tidbits from diaries or articles that just casually mentioned walking past “the graves.” This year’s big find—Abel Galland’s family graves. His grandson was the mission president here a few years ago. Galland was one of the third who did not go west but stayed after founding his own community and becoming a very wealthy man--selling honey and the lumber from his acres and acres of black walnut trees that were used for railroad ties and the stocks of rifles for the army including WWI and WWII.

Other guests included Kevin Henson and his wife Denny—another Kimball cousin—her grandmother is Ellen Saunders, one of Heber C. Kimball’s wives.

Kevin and Denny are from Midland Michigan and have quite a story. The two of them recreated the March of the Mormon Battalion. He said in the middle of the march he got a phone call. He used a transmitter the whole trip to broadcast to his family from wherever they were, but this call was from a missionary. Kevin asked where he was calling from. “The Easter Islands!” was the reply. He had picked Kevin’s transmissions up via satellite! What an irony -- Kevin in 1846 clothes recreating an 1846 event along side the modern technology that connected him to a missionary on the other side of the world!

What was amazing about their presentation was that he has managed to marry the 1846 maps with the new Google maps of the same area. It was quite a show as he took us along the 2180 mile journey as accurately trekked as they could possibly make it. We learned many things about the Battalion—the wives and 150 of the sick went to Pueblo and went from there to the Valley. Most amazing was that a third did not go to Utah. Many went back to Iowa. One battalion member made a fortune at Sutter’s Mill and returned to buy one of the largest farms in Iowa. But the biggest surprise--some of those battalion members are the ancestors of people who are in Thurman today—famous founders of the town—the Forney family, the Study family and the Dyke family. So the Mormon Battalion History touches far more lives that just those in Utah.

As we returned home we admired the rolling hills so reminiscent of the hedgerows of England. Once again we were grateful that our ancestors had the faith to be willing to leave this beautiful land and go to live in a desert. Otherwise this land might have been home.

Our Last Word about Floods!

One of the frustrations for tourists coming to see Winter Quarters this summer has been that the flooding of the Missouri has closed many bridges all up and down the river because the roads leading to those bridges have been under water the last three months. That has meant lots of detours and wasted time. GPS directions don’t’ send you on the good route--I-80 via the Eppley Airport with all its signs leading to the Mormon Trail Center, but instead send you to I-29 and I-680. This is why you can’t come see us on I-680—it is gone!

The remains of the road pictured leads to the Mormon Bridge not far from us, that was built several years ago to replace the Mormon Ferry. It looks like a ferry may be our only option at this end of town for a couple of years.

We are so sad about our beloved Binghamton. Our Triple Cities friends are in our thoughts and prayers as you recover form your devastating flood. We have been surrounded by flooded farms, but flooded cities seem to have a different impact especially when it is yours.