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.
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.
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 