Not only is researching my maternal grandmother’s line difficult, it’s exhausting! Not only is there a paucity of evidence, there are so many conflicts and inconsistencies to reconcile in the few records I do have. When I began this post, just the thought of writing about my Great x3 Grandfather Georg Jacob Anton was taxing, only because I knew I had my work cut out for me.
In fact, after many hours of pouring over what I do have, the most significant advance I made was to change the title and image caption from “(Georg) Jacob Anton” to simply “Jacob Anton”. One of my oldest sources for the Anton line is The Antons: German-Russian Heritage 1720-1995 published in 1995. It listed Jacob as “(Georg) Jacob”. It’s been in my database that way ever since, even though in the last 30 years I’ve come across enough information indicating that it’s simply “Jacob”.
Jacob was born in 1843 in Karlsruhe Colony in the Beresan. Based upon the Karlsruhe census for 1858, he was the eldest son and second child of Johannes Anton and Marianna Schmidt. Johannes and Marianna were most likely from Mörlheim, Landau, Rhinepalatinate before settling in Karlsruhe.
Jacob married Katherina Loran on October 28, 1863 in Karlsruhe. The family lived in Karlsruhe until about 1874, when they relocated to Christina, a recently founded daughter colony. In Christina, Jacob and Katherina had six more children.
Katharina died about 1893. Jacob remarried shortly after Katharina died, to Magdalina Gustin. Magdalina was a widow herself. They had two sons, Alexander and Thomas, known as “Fat Alex” and “Al Capone” after they immigrated to southwest Saskatchwan. There were a lot of Alexander Antons in their community, so they all had nicknames. As for Thomas, my Great Aunt Adeline (who was Thomas’s great niece), told me that he earned his nickname because he operated a homemade still.
Jacob died in Christina on September 18, 1908. Magdalina, along with Alex and Thomas, left for Canada in June 1912. The ship manifest noted that Magdalena was a widow. In addition to her sons Alex and Thomas, the manifest noted that there were two other individuals traveling with Magdalena. One was an individual who was 21 years old and married, but the name is intelligible. Presumably, this person could be a child of Magdalena’s from her first marriage. This person also had a one-year-old child named Rosa, who would likely be Magdalena’s granddaughter.
Magdalina and her family travelled aboard the S.S. Pennsylvania on the same voyage that brought Jacob and Katherina’s son Jacob and his family to the new world. Also on that voyage was Katherina’s brother, Sebastian, and his family. The ship landed at Ellis Island on July 1, 1912. A fitting date, as that was Dominion Day (now known as Canada Day). The families all then made their way to the Fox Valley and Rastadt area of southwest Saskatchewan.
For me, the passenger list almost reads like a family group sheet!
We’ve reached the last card in the deck for my mother’s paternal line and the last of my Mormon ancestors who I’ll be looking at for this year’s 52 Ancestors Challenge.
Maria Hadlond, my Gx3 Grandmother, is my most recent ancestor from England. I have to go back another five generations on some of my other maternal lines before I can come upon anyone else from Old Blighty. Maria was born in Cheltenham, Gloucester, England on August 27, 1838, to Thomas Hadlond (1814-1892) and Rachel Franklin (1817-1879).
Thomas and Rachel were originally from West Oxfordshire, but were living in Cheltenham, on the edge of the Cotswolds, in the years before they emigrated. At the time, Thomas was working as a domestic servant.
Sometime in the late 1840s, the Hadlonds heard the preaching of some Mormon missionaries. On November 23, 1846, Rachel was baptized into the church. Several of their older children were baptized in the next two years, including Maria who was baptized on December 21, 1848, when she was 10 years old. I have the impression that while Rachel was a fervent convert, Thomas wasn’t too taken with the new religion and never actually joined it in his lifetime. He wasn’t baptized until 1893, a year after his death.
Whatever Thomas’s beliefs, the family left England for America to join the migration of Mormon converts who hoped to join the settlement in Utah. It is most likely the family left England sometime after September 1850, when their daughter Alice was born, and before June 1853, when their son Franklin was born. In fact, while their destination was ultimately the United States, it seems that the family entered North America through Canada, as Franklin was born in the Province of Canada (likely Canada West, which is modern-day Ontario).
By no later than 1856, the Hadlonds were in St. Louis, Missouri. It seems that the family’s circumstances were such that they did not plan to move to Utah anytime soon. However, I have not been able to determine whether this was because of finances (many Mormon migrants took years moving west while saving up for the trip) or because Thomas was not an adherent or all that serious about the church.
When Maria was 16, her mother met a Mormon missionary by the name of Preston Thomas who was passing through St. Louis on his way to Texas. When Rachel learned that Preston planned to arrange for a company of Texan converts to migrate to Utah, she “begged” him to take her three oldest children with him. This included Maria. Thomas did as requested and took the three Hadlond children to Utah. Ultimately, Maria’s two siblings returned to St. Louis and lived out the rest of their lives there. Maria remained in Utah.
Two years later, on October 8, 1856, Maria married Preston in Brigham Young’s office in Salt Lake City, with Young himself officiating. Preston was 42 years old at the time; Maria was 18. Moreover, this was a plural (polygamous) marriage, as Preston had two other wives. Preston’s first wife, Sarah Jane Morehead, was born the same year as Maria’s mother and they had a daughter only a few months younger than Maria. Preston’s second wife, Maria Foscue, was 16 years older than Maria. In order to avoid confusion between the two wives, Maria went by “Molly”. Molly and Preston had nine children together. This was in addition to the nine Preston fathered with Sarah Jane and four he fathered with Maria.
For the first four years after Molly married Preston, the entire family lived in Lehi, Utah, where Molly gave birth to her first two children. This included Ella Thomas, my Gx2 Grandmother.
Four generations: Maria with her granddaughter Maria (“Mimie”) Lamb (née Thomas) holding great granddaughter Rulon Lamb, and Ella Nelson (née Thomas), my Gx3 Grandmother.
In 1860, Brigham Young had Preston join a team exploring an area in northern Utah, where Young intended to form a new settlement that is now Franklin, Idaho. However, at the time, and for many years afterwards, the inhabitants thought they were in Utah. They only discovered later that the town was a mile north of the Utah-Idaho border.
Young directed Preston to return to Lehi to collect his family and join the first settlers. In addition, Young appointed Preston as the first Bishop of Franklin. Preston did as he was asked (today we might say “voluntold”), but it appears that Maria Foscue might have refused and remained in Lehi with her children.
In 1863, Brigham Young formed a team of 12 to 15 men to explore the Bear Lake Valley in Idaho, not far from Franklin. This group included Preston. By September 1863 a settlement had been erected in Bear Lake Valley where Paris, Idaho now stands. Preston moved the family there in the spring of 1864. A few years later, Preston moved the family to Fish Haven, about 20 kilometers south of Paris.
During the family’s time in Idaho, Preston carried out at least one more major mission to the South. This was in addition to Preston’s other endeavors, which included a term as a judge of the Utah Probate Court (when it was still believed that Franklin was in Utah) and a run for office for the Idaho territorial legislature (after the discovery Franklin was in Utah). This obviously left Sarah Jane and Molly without his support while they raised a significantly large household of children.
Preston’s absences from home were compounded when he left this world following an accident that occurred in 1877 while he was building a house on his property. Molly’s youngest child was seven months old at the time.
Maria with her three youngest children: Daniel, Letitia, and Rosabell (seated).
I have not yet tracked where Molly lived in the years immediately following Preston’s death, so I don’t know if she remained in Idaho or moved back to Utah. However, over the years several of her children joined the Mormons who were settling in Canada, in what is now the southern part of the province of Alberta. For example, her daughter Ella had moved there with her husband John Nelson. So in 1896, Molly and four of her children – all of whom were now adults – moved to Cardston, Alberta. Census records show that in 1901 Molly (who was going by Maria again) was a neighbour of one of her sons.
In 1902, Maria moved back to the United States and settled in the “Sugar House” neighbourhood of Salt Lake City, one of the oldest neighbourhoods in the city. Maria remained at the same house for the rest of her life. She passed away at home on May 29, 1907. She is interred in Franklin at the Franklin Cemetery.
Next week we start the last suit, covering my mother’s maternal line, who are Germans from Russia.
I know I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: my Gx3 Grandmother, Elizabeth Joseph, was not Jewish. I cannot find a shred of evidence to support the suggestion, which definitely falls short of the Genealogical Proof Standard. Elizabeth also wasn’t Scottish, which I’ve also addressed before.
Elizabeth was born on September 16, 1818 in Muff, Donegal, Ireland. It is very likely that she was baptized on November 1, 1818. While the document is not available online, my great aunt Fon Hogg (née Burgess) apparently had or saw a copy of a church record showing Elizabeth’s baptism, which is definitely contrary to her being Jewish.
While there has been a nominal Jewish presence in Ireland for centuries, it was miniscule and largely confined to Dublin or the south coast. However, exclusionary laws resulted in the decline of the tiny Jewish population up until the early 19th century. By the time of the Great Famine, there were only about 25 Jewish families in Dublin. The Jewish population in all of Ireland in 1871 was only 258. Muff is about 8 km north of Londonderry, where the Jewish community was not established until 1893. In 1894, there were only 43 Jews in Londonderry. As of 2016, there were only 25 Jews in Donegal. I also have not seen any DNA test results of Elizabeth’s descendants suggesting that have even a trace of Jewish ancestry. So it is extremely unlikely that Elizabeth was Jewish.
I know nothing of Elizabeth’s life between her birth and marriage to Robert Nelson on December 12, 1842 in Muff. One thing I find interesting about Elizabeth and Robert is that they had remarkably similar lifespans. Robert was two weeks older than Elizabeth and died three months before she did.
The other interesting thing is that Elizabeth and Robert left Ireland for Scotland by 1844 – a year before the Great Famine. However, their departure was not unusual. Ireland was poor, many Irish worked in Scotland as seasonal migrants, and emigration was already on the rise before the Famine.
Elizabeth and Robert had three children in Scotland. While there, the couple joined the fledgling Mormon church and were baptized in 1848. In 1850, Elizabeth and Robert joined the exodus of converts travelling from the UK to Utah. The family travelled from Liverpool to New Orleans in September 1850.
However, upon arriving in the United States, Elizabeth and family did not immediately make their way to Utah. Rather, they spent a year or two in Missouri. In May 1852 in St. Louis, Elizabeth had another child, her first daughter, Mary. Within months of Mary’s birth, the family were in Utah, settling in Farmington. Elizabeth had four more children in Farmington.
In 1860, Elizabeth and Robert moved for the last time, to Smithfield, Utah. There, Elizabeth gave birth to her last child, a daughter named Jane, in September 1862. Elizabeth spent the next forty years in Smithfield, where she died on September 12, 1902.
Deseret Evening News, May 16, 1902 (Last Edition), Page 7
Anyone who has done genealogy long enough knows all about the family trees you can find online that are wildly incorrect, have blatant errors, or don’t have a scintilla of evidence to back them up, which are then replicated and used by others, perpetuating and spreading the error. Nowhere in my tree is there a better example of this than my Gx3 Grandparents, Robert Nelson and Elizabeth Joseph. There are a lot of myths, legends, and erroneous information posted about them online that simply are not true.
This sort of thing pre-dates the rise of genealogy on the internet, usually in the form of family lore that was (and still is) passed around. One such story I heard from a relative was that Robert Nelson was a descendant of famed Scottish poet Robbie Burns. While I knew enough not to accept the suggestion as truth, I was thrilled by the possibility because he is one of my favourites. In the meantime, I was excited by the idea that I might have Scottish roots.
It did not take long to dispel the myth that Robert was a descendant of Scotland’s bard. Robert Nelson’s mother was a woman named Martha Burns. Martha was born in 1787. So while her surname was Burns and she was born at a time Robbie Burns was busy fathering numerous children, that is where the correlation ends. None of Burns’ children – legitimate and illegitimate – were named Martha. Besides, Robert Nelson and his mother weren’t even Scottish, they were Irish, although Robert spent about eight years living in Scotland before emigrating for the United States.
Robert was born on September 4, 1818 in Muff, Donegal, to Samuel Nelson and Martha Burns, both of whom were also born in Donegal. I know very little about Robert’s life in Ireland. Beyond his birth, the earliest thing I know is that he married Elizabeth Joseph in Muff on December 12, 1842.
There are many unsubstantiated legends around their marriage. One story, with many iterations, is that Joseph and Elizabeth became stranded overnight by a storm during a picnic. To ameliorate the disgrace of spending the night together, Joseph did the honourable thing and married Elizabeth. Another myth, without a shred of evidence, is that Elizabeth was Jewish and was disowned by her parents when she married a Christian. Rubbish.
Within two years of marrying, Robert and Elizabeth were living in Linwood, Scotland, about 15 kilometers west of Glasgow. Robert was a labourer there. While in Linwood, the couple had their first child, a son named Samuel, born in 1844.
By 1847, the family was living in Greenock, Scotland, a port town west of Glasgow. There Robert worked for Brown’s Sugar House on Roxburgh Street as a sugar baker. Sugar bakers refined muscovado sugar, an unrefined brown sugar imported from Barbados. While in Greenock, Robert and Elizabeth had two more children.
Meanwhile, the first Mormon missionaries arrived in Scotland in the early 1840s. Within ten years, there were two to three thousand adherents to the new religion, with about 70 branches. Many of these people began to emigrate to the United States to join the Mormons who had settled in Utah which, perhaps ironically, resulted in a decline in the church in Scotland.
Robert and Elizabeth joined the Mormon church and were baptized in December 1848. They joined the exodus of people from Scotland who were heading to the New World.
Robert and his family departed Liverpool on September 3, 1850 aboard the ship North Atlantic. All they brought with them was two boxes of clothing. For years I thought “north Atlantic” was a description of their route, until seeing the ship’s manifest. Robert and Elizabeth were part of a group of Mormon converts travelling aboard this ship, which showed at least one other passenger who had been a sugar baker at Brown’s.
Passenger list for the ship “North Atlantic”, which left Liverpool on September 3, 1850, showing the Nelson family travelling from Liverpool to New Orleans.
The North Atlantic landed at New Orleans. Robert and family spent about the next two years in Missouri, where they had a daughter, Mary, in 1852. Within months of Mary’s birth, the family arrived in Utah. They settled in Farmington, just north of Salt Lake City. In 1858, while still living in Farmington, Robert became an American citizen. Robert and Elizabeth had another four children while living in Farmington, including my Gx2 Grandfather, John Alexander Nelson.
Excerpt of the Invoice of Passengers for the ship “North Atlantic“
Sometime around late 1859, Robert and family moved to Smithfield, Utah, not far from the Idaho border. Robert and Elizabeth’s youngest child, a daughter named Jane Margaret, was born there in 1862. There Robert was a farmer in Smithfield. According to the 1870 census, Robert owned $400 in real property and $300 in personal property. In 1880, Robert was elected to at least one term as a school trustee in Smithfield.
It seems that typical of all my Mormon Gx3 Grandfathers, Robert may have also been a practitioner of polygamy. According to my Aunt Fon, who was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints, Robert was “sealed” to two women on the same day, November 15, 1855. This is an ordinance (rite) in the Mormon church by which individuals are sealed together for eternity. Robert was 66 at the time. Beyond the fact the rite occurred, I know nothing about either woman beyond their names, Mary Ann Burns and Elizabeth Dixon.
Robert, who was only two weeks older than Elizabeth Joseph, died in Smithfield on February 10, 1902, three months before Elizabeth died. Robert is buried at the Smithfield City Cemetery.
A Deck of Ancestors 