Thoughts and stories, by Pal

AUTOBIOBRAPHY OF SAMUEL MILES JR., SON OF SAMUEL AND PRUDENCE MARKS MILES SR.       The first part of the autobiography of my great grandfather, Samuel Miles Jr.  His parents joined the Church in 1833, and lived through the days in Kirtland, and Nauvoo, including many of the persecutions there.  His story gives quite a vivid picture of life in those times.  I'm so grateful for faithful pioneer ancestors!   Today in Stake Conference, a visiting Seventy, Elder Ellis, talked about how many people we affect in our lives, and our effect also on the posterity of those we teach.  We have no idea how much our actions affect many people, now and in generations to come.  Samuel Miles Jr. wrote quite an extensive journal.   The next 3 entries will be of his life, as it is too long for one entry, but it is very interesting.  He was only 7 when his parents joined the Church, and he lived through the entire early history of the Church, even...

I told about Hiram Miles Dayton and his wife Anne Chamberlain in blog # 117.  But somehow I have neglected telling about the life of his father, Hiram Dayton, and his wife Permelia Bundy, who were the original pioneers in our Dayton line.  For those who have read more of our family stories, Wayne's mother was Gladys Tregenna Dayton -- who married Roy Waldamer Eckman.  This history is about Gladys' great grandparents, Hiram and Permelia Dayton. The Dayton ancestral line is especially interesting, because we have brief records of each Dayton ancestor clear back to Robert de Deighton, a yeoman, who was born in Yorkshire, in the late 1200's, and became a freeman in 1305.  I will tell the Deighton/Dayton history very soon, down to Ralph Dayton (Deighton) who changed his name to Dayton, the immigrant ancestor.   He was a cordwainer, (or shoemaker) and had arrived in New England in 1636, and was living in the New Haven colony in 1639 -- more about that later. I...

I am deciding something that I believe is wise.  I have truly enjoyed writing this blog, and in it I have written several family history stories which are already in the books we have published and given to our children and grand-children.  I realize they are very busy, and don't have much time to peruse these books.  Some of them have told me they really love these stories, and haven't known they already have them, -- but didn't know where to find them in the books.  I'll try to put pages in, so all you posterity can find them in our books! Wayne and I have been the Stake Indexing leaders in our Stake for over a year.  Wayne does a very lot of indexing, but I do some other things also, and haven't been doing as much indexing as I did before I began writing the blog.  I believe I need to be more diligent doing that, and so I will cut down the number of blogs I do -- each week I plan to do at least 3 blogs, probably Monday, Wednesday, and Friday .  Su...