Category: 52 Ancestors 2023

I’ve only been to one family reunion, when I was 13. It was a gathering of all the descendants of John Alexander Nelson and Ella Elizabeth Thomas, my great great grandparents.

They were amongst the earliest settlers of Cardston, which was founded in 1887 by members of the Latter Day Saints (Mormons). John and Ella were both born in Utah a few short years after it became a territory of the United States. John was born in 1854 to Irish immigrant parents. Ella was born in 1859. Her father was originally from North Carolina and her mother was from England. John had worked as a farm labourer in Utah before he married. John and Ella married in Salt Lake City in 1879. Shortly afterwards, John and Ella moved to Smithfield, Utah, where John continued to work in farming.

John and Ella came to Canada in September 1890. John and Ella had five children at the time. The family travelled to Canada by covered wagon. Their eldest daughter, Maria, said that she often drove the wagon team while her father managed the cattle. The family first settled in a sod dugout at “Lee’s Creek”, west of Cardston. They arrived with 13 horses, 7 cows, 7 “other horned cattle”, and a pig.

^{This was where John and Ella first settled in Canada, just west of Cardston, where the prairies meet the foothills of the Rockies.}

The book, Alberta Past and Present, states that upon moving to Canada, John homesteaded on 160 acres of raw land. The homestead was located on Lee Creek, which ran through the property and into the centre of Cardston. The farmhouse was about four kilometers southwest of the town centre and is located on what is now Alberta highway 501.

In addition to farming, John also worked in carpentry. As well, John and a partner, John Turner, constructed and operated the first lime kiln in this part of the country. In 1906, John and Ella moved to nearby Woolford, Alberta, where John continued farming. John and Ella briefly returned to Utah in the early 1920s, where John operated an orchard or fruit farm, but they returned to Woolford in 1924. John continued farming the rest of his working life.

Ella did not simply bide her time in the background as a farm wife and mother. According to a Lethbridge Herald article published after her death, in 1892 Charles Ora Card, Cardston’s founder and stake president, called to on Ella to study nursing and obstetrics. After six months’ training, Ella returned to Cardston and started her service. The Herald article says that Ella “answered every call from 1892 to the time when the district was supplied with medical men, and after that time when there was more work than one doctor could do”. Ella continued as a midwife until 1932, when she was 73.

John and Ella had twelve children, two of whom died in infancy. This included my great grandmother, Hazel Nelson, and her twin sister, Irene, who died at one month old. Ella died in October 1941. John died almost a year later, in September 1942.

The reunion was quite an interesting experience for me. The reunion was held in Bigfork, Montana, with attendees from the United States and Canada. At the time, I knew I had American ancestors, but did not realize how large an extended family I had that lived there. A memorable highlight for me was some of my mother’s American cousins hiring me to babysit for them one night – and paying me in American dollars.

Another interesting part of the experience was that our immediate family, and my maternal grandmother, were pretty much the only attendees who were not members of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) church. While my maternal grandfather Leo Burgess was Mormon, he was no longer an active participant in the church during my childhood, so at the time I knew little about their church, customs, and traditions. In my late teens my grandfather began participating more in the church, which is when I learned much more about them.

The star of the reunion was my great great uncle Cleveland Nelson. Cleve was John and Ella’s eighth-born and last surviving child. He was 87 years old at the time. Everyone wanted to talk to and get a photo with him!