Doing so much Family History work of late has been really interesting. Mary Elizabeth Holdaway Conrad (briefly Evensen!) who I wrote about last had a daughter, her oldest child, named Mary Elizabeth as well, a person that my dad knew as Aunt Lizzie. She was seven years older than my grandfather, her brother Art, and died young-ish (63--I am almost 63! so young!) in 1938, so I never met her. (In 1938, my father was years away from even meeting my mother!) But I heard talk about Aunt Lizzie from my dad and my grandma and from Aunt Theresia, her husband's second wife, who I did know.
I always thought Aunt Lizzie was pretty, from the pictures I saw. When she was almost 21, she married Christian Hyrum Muhlestein (Uncle Hyrum to my dad) who had a little sister named Ida. Ida was 16 years younger than Hyrum, and was ten years old when he married Lizzie Conrad. She would have known the other Conrads because the children in the two families often walked to school together. At age ten, she could not have imagined growing up to marry that pesky, teasing Art Conrad, who was four years older than she. But that is what happened, and so the children in the two families became double cousins--genetically siblings. (Well, full disclosure: Hyrum and Ida were technically half-siblings, but in their family there was no "half" as a matter of principle. But it makes their children genetically more than cousins but less than siblings.)
Here is a picture of my pretty Great Aunt Lizzie with her husband, my Great Uncle Hyrum:
That is their wedding picture--they started the year out as a married couple in 1896. Isn't Aunt Lizzie pretty? I think she is. But I had no clue that the whole community of Provo agreed with me, until my cousin April (daughter of Herrick who is (was) the son of this handsome couple above) posted a cute news clipping on Family Search:
In 1892, Lizzie was 17, and a "beauty queen"! This was especially amusing to me because Aunt Lizzie is also related to my friend Noel--Noel descends from the Holdaways--another of Lucinda's children, NOT her Mary Elizabeth. But Noel, who is very into genealogy, had fallen in love with both Mary Elizabeths, finding them to be fascinating women, and so she named her oldest daughter Mary Elizabeth after them. Mary Elizabeth is a lovely young woman, but not the beauty queen type. However, Noel's second daughter, Glory, got into the beauty queen game, and now so have her two younger sisters, Emarie and Elsie, so three of Noel's daughters wear metaphorical (and sometimes literal!) crowns.
Noel was delighted when I shared the clipping about Mary Elizabeth's namesake being a "representative of our fair territory." Glory was maybe about 17 when she first got a "crown." Maybe only 15 or 16. (Miss Orem 2019--and serving also in 2020 because they could not run a pageant due to COVID-19--and Miss Orem's Outstanding Teen 2016.)
This is kind of off the Muhlestein path, but only just barely, since Mary Elizabeth Conrad the beauty queen got married and became Mary Elizabeth Muhlestein.
So, I was in the database newspapers.com and looking for news clippings about the Muhlesteins. This is because I work on the Family Bibles project in Family Search, and sometimes instead of bibles, newspaper articles are posted. And so I thought, I can do this for my family (like April did--finding that ME Conrad beauty queen clipping!)
I started out looking for my grandparents, and found that in addition to my grandfather, Art Conrad, having an obituary in the Lethbridge Herald, there was also one for him in the Provo newspaper. It had several humorous mistakes--which could be a big problem for future researchers, like my Uncle Elmer Jacobson--who is he? My Uncle Elmer is a Johnson!--but I gathered both obituaries and put them in a document and posted them on my grandfather's page. Then I was looking for my grandmother. Even though she grew up in Provo, there was no obituary for her in that paper--because she was the last of the 18 Muhlestein children to die. So there was nobody to think about putting the notice of her death in the Provo paper! When Grandpa died in 1960, he still had sisters alive who lived in Provo, who knew that people there--their friends and relatives--would want to know he died. So they probably put the notice in the paper. ("Now what is Elaine's husband's name? Is it Jacobson? Johnson? Jensen?")
I found and posted obituaries for some of Grandma's siblings, and then I found her nephew Tell's obituary, so I looked him up on Family Search, and his obituary was already there. I thought about Tell because I knew him. He was one of Lizzie's sons. Lizzie had four sons. Joseph was born and died the same day--her first son after four daughters. Then she had Tell in 1913, and Herrick in 1916. My dad was between them, in 1915, so he felt close to these double cousins. We did not always visit them when we came to Provo, but if we didn't, Dad would always call them. (Calling long distance was uber expensive back in the day, and saved for emergencies or special occasions. But when we were local, he could just borrow the phone on the wall where we were visiting, and call the cousins he didn't have time to see.)
But I got to know Tell because my roommate Renee worked for Provo City Schools as a classroom aide and bus aide for special needs children. There was a special needs classroom at Academy Square, in the building that was saved and is now Provo Public Library. Renee and I lived just a few blocks away, so I would sometimes go to work with her. Tell was the special needs bus driver. Sometimes I went on the bus route with both of them. I am pretty sure that Renee and I also went to Tell's house once for a barbeque. My cousin Marilyn, daughter of Herrick and Joyce Muhlestein, was one of the special needs children who was in Renee's group of students and who rode on Tell's bus.
So, while looking for clippings about my Grandma and her siblings, I found that Tell obituary. I attended Tell's funeral in September 1978. I think I took Margaret or Marie with me, but I don't remember for sure. Maybe I went alone. This was the year that I had the little red truck, so I could drive myself where I wanted/needed to go. Tell's funeral was wonderful. (I love a great funeral, honestly.) But there was so much about him that I didn't know, and that I discovered through reading newspaper clippings about him.
Like, I didn't know that he was a champion breeder of irises! Just like Uncle Clyde was a champion breeder of gladioli!! That is so cool. Tell won the highest award at an international competition in Italy with his iris called "Swan Ballet." And then I found out about his breeding of canaries!! When Tell was 10 years old, someone gave him a canary. Fast forward 15 years, and after having won every award imaginable for his birds, he was paying his way through college breeding canaries, and traveling to competitions to judge the birds of others. "Bird Man of Orem" he was called in a 1974 newspaper feature that revealed that he was only one of ten qualified canary judges. In this article I also learned that he was named for William Tell, the archery hero--another link to my archery loving father! I had always wondered about his name. (And Herrick's!--but I don't know the answer to that yet!) Go and look up Grant Tell Muhlestein on Family Search and you can read all about it!! I posted articles there!! Here is a teaser:
I was excited because my little grandson Alexander is a bird enthusiast, specifically attracted to owls. When we went to the zoo in 2019, before they moved, and Alexander watched the bird show, he just fell in love with the swooping owls. Maybe he will grow up to be an ornithologist. Or a bird breeder. Who knows? But the bird interest is something he shares with others on the family tree--I will include my mother, who was a dedicated bird watcher, with binoculars at the ready to get a closer look at her bird friends out the window.
Because of my personal connection to Tell and Marilyn, specifically, I also looked on Herrick's page on Family Search, and noticed that Marilyn had died in 2019. I felt bad for not knowing about that, because I would have liked to attend her funeral. She would not remember me--well, a moot point at a funeral!--but I certainly remember her. She had down syndrome, but she did not let that stop her from having a very full life! Look up Marilyn Elizabeth Muhlestein on Family Search and read all about her achievements! I wrote a little note to my cousin April to tell her that I was sorry about the passing of Marilyn, and she wrote back and said this:
"Her husband Doug has autism. He 'sees' Marilyn all the time. He says she's taller and she doesn't have downs syndrome. She got pnuemonia in February and was put in hospice. I was able to come out and see her a few weeks before she passed. She definitely was a wonderful woman. I miss her so much."
In real life, my cousin Marie and I got to know Joyce, Marilyn's mom, because we were all three in women's chorus together. My dad's cousin Herrick died in 1976, leaving Joyce to finish raising their family, so she returned to BYU to get a degree so she could be a better breadwinner. Marie and I spent time in their home which was an interesting home because their kitchen was in the basement. It was fun to be friends with Joyce. Marie, Joyce and I all sang different parts, so we didn't sit together, but Women's Chorus was a very social space, so we "hung out" together a lot. It was fun to reconnect with Marilyn, too, since Renee was no longer at BYU by then, so I didn't see her regularly as I had done while living with Renee.
So, then I looked up by grandma's dad, Nicholas, and was distressed to see that someone had given him two more wives!! What the heck?!! I was still reeling from the shock of Mary Elizabeth Holdaway Conrad marrying that Erastus guy without anyone telling me, and now here my polygamist great-grandfather had FOUR wives, and not just the two I grew up knowing about? The name associated with those postings on Family Search was my second cousin once removed, so I sent her a message asking about it. Here is her reply:
I think we have all wondered about that. All of his histories and anything I have seen written does not mention anything about it. The only thing I can figure is they must have been family friends or acquaintance from Switzerland. That is where they died and there is no mention of them ever coming to the USA. Nicholas was alive when the ordinances were preformed so he must have been part of whatever decision was made. After trying to find out about them, I decided that this is probably one of those times to just leave it be and hope we find out more in the hereafter. If you happen to find anything, please let me know. I would love to know, too. Thank you for contacting me. Good to meet another cousin. Loraine
Huh. Interesting. And so ends this episode of "Meet the Muhlesteins."
I always thought Aunt Lizzie was pretty, from the pictures I saw. When she was almost 21, she married Christian Hyrum Muhlestein (Uncle Hyrum to my dad) who had a little sister named Ida. Ida was 16 years younger than Hyrum, and was ten years old when he married Lizzie Conrad. She would have known the other Conrads because the children in the two families often walked to school together. At age ten, she could not have imagined growing up to marry that pesky, teasing Art Conrad, who was four years older than she. But that is what happened, and so the children in the two families became double cousins--genetically siblings. (Well, full disclosure: Hyrum and Ida were technically half-siblings, but in their family there was no "half" as a matter of principle. But it makes their children genetically more than cousins but less than siblings.)
Here is a picture of my pretty Great Aunt Lizzie with her husband, my Great Uncle Hyrum:
In 1892, Lizzie was 17, and a "beauty queen"! This was especially amusing to me because Aunt Lizzie is also related to my friend Noel--Noel descends from the Holdaways--another of Lucinda's children, NOT her Mary Elizabeth. But Noel, who is very into genealogy, had fallen in love with both Mary Elizabeths, finding them to be fascinating women, and so she named her oldest daughter Mary Elizabeth after them. Mary Elizabeth is a lovely young woman, but not the beauty queen type. However, Noel's second daughter, Glory, got into the beauty queen game, and now so have her two younger sisters, Emarie and Elsie, so three of Noel's daughters wear metaphorical (and sometimes literal!) crowns.
 |
| Glory in white, Emarie in green, and Elsie in front (2019) |
This is kind of off the Muhlestein path, but only just barely, since Mary Elizabeth Conrad the beauty queen got married and became Mary Elizabeth Muhlestein.
So, I was in the database newspapers.com and looking for news clippings about the Muhlesteins. This is because I work on the Family Bibles project in Family Search, and sometimes instead of bibles, newspaper articles are posted. And so I thought, I can do this for my family (like April did--finding that ME Conrad beauty queen clipping!)
I started out looking for my grandparents, and found that in addition to my grandfather, Art Conrad, having an obituary in the Lethbridge Herald, there was also one for him in the Provo newspaper. It had several humorous mistakes--which could be a big problem for future researchers, like my Uncle Elmer Jacobson--who is he? My Uncle Elmer is a Johnson!--but I gathered both obituaries and put them in a document and posted them on my grandfather's page. Then I was looking for my grandmother. Even though she grew up in Provo, there was no obituary for her in that paper--because she was the last of the 18 Muhlestein children to die. So there was nobody to think about putting the notice of her death in the Provo paper! When Grandpa died in 1960, he still had sisters alive who lived in Provo, who knew that people there--their friends and relatives--would want to know he died. So they probably put the notice in the paper. ("Now what is Elaine's husband's name? Is it Jacobson? Johnson? Jensen?")
I found and posted obituaries for some of Grandma's siblings, and then I found her nephew Tell's obituary, so I looked him up on Family Search, and his obituary was already there. I thought about Tell because I knew him. He was one of Lizzie's sons. Lizzie had four sons. Joseph was born and died the same day--her first son after four daughters. Then she had Tell in 1913, and Herrick in 1916. My dad was between them, in 1915, so he felt close to these double cousins. We did not always visit them when we came to Provo, but if we didn't, Dad would always call them. (Calling long distance was uber expensive back in the day, and saved for emergencies or special occasions. But when we were local, he could just borrow the phone on the wall where we were visiting, and call the cousins he didn't have time to see.)
But I got to know Tell because my roommate Renee worked for Provo City Schools as a classroom aide and bus aide for special needs children. There was a special needs classroom at Academy Square, in the building that was saved and is now Provo Public Library. Renee and I lived just a few blocks away, so I would sometimes go to work with her. Tell was the special needs bus driver. Sometimes I went on the bus route with both of them. I am pretty sure that Renee and I also went to Tell's house once for a barbeque. My cousin Marilyn, daughter of Herrick and Joyce Muhlestein, was one of the special needs children who was in Renee's group of students and who rode on Tell's bus.
So, while looking for clippings about my Grandma and her siblings, I found that Tell obituary. I attended Tell's funeral in September 1978. I think I took Margaret or Marie with me, but I don't remember for sure. Maybe I went alone. This was the year that I had the little red truck, so I could drive myself where I wanted/needed to go. Tell's funeral was wonderful. (I love a great funeral, honestly.) But there was so much about him that I didn't know, and that I discovered through reading newspaper clippings about him.
Like, I didn't know that he was a champion breeder of irises! Just like Uncle Clyde was a champion breeder of gladioli!! That is so cool. Tell won the highest award at an international competition in Italy with his iris called "Swan Ballet." And then I found out about his breeding of canaries!! When Tell was 10 years old, someone gave him a canary. Fast forward 15 years, and after having won every award imaginable for his birds, he was paying his way through college breeding canaries, and traveling to competitions to judge the birds of others. "Bird Man of Orem" he was called in a 1974 newspaper feature that revealed that he was only one of ten qualified canary judges. In this article I also learned that he was named for William Tell, the archery hero--another link to my archery loving father! I had always wondered about his name. (And Herrick's!--but I don't know the answer to that yet!) Go and look up Grant Tell Muhlestein on Family Search and you can read all about it!! I posted articles there!! Here is a teaser:
I was excited because my little grandson Alexander is a bird enthusiast, specifically attracted to owls. When we went to the zoo in 2019, before they moved, and Alexander watched the bird show, he just fell in love with the swooping owls. Maybe he will grow up to be an ornithologist. Or a bird breeder. Who knows? But the bird interest is something he shares with others on the family tree--I will include my mother, who was a dedicated bird watcher, with binoculars at the ready to get a closer look at her bird friends out the window.
Because of my personal connection to Tell and Marilyn, specifically, I also looked on Herrick's page on Family Search, and noticed that Marilyn had died in 2019. I felt bad for not knowing about that, because I would have liked to attend her funeral. She would not remember me--well, a moot point at a funeral!--but I certainly remember her. She had down syndrome, but she did not let that stop her from having a very full life! Look up Marilyn Elizabeth Muhlestein on Family Search and read all about her achievements! I wrote a little note to my cousin April to tell her that I was sorry about the passing of Marilyn, and she wrote back and said this:
"Her husband Doug has autism. He 'sees' Marilyn all the time. He says she's taller and she doesn't have downs syndrome. She got pnuemonia in February and was put in hospice. I was able to come out and see her a few weeks before she passed. She definitely was a wonderful woman. I miss her so much."
In real life, my cousin Marie and I got to know Joyce, Marilyn's mom, because we were all three in women's chorus together. My dad's cousin Herrick died in 1976, leaving Joyce to finish raising their family, so she returned to BYU to get a degree so she could be a better breadwinner. Marie and I spent time in their home which was an interesting home because their kitchen was in the basement. It was fun to be friends with Joyce. Marie, Joyce and I all sang different parts, so we didn't sit together, but Women's Chorus was a very social space, so we "hung out" together a lot. It was fun to reconnect with Marilyn, too, since Renee was no longer at BYU by then, so I didn't see her regularly as I had done while living with Renee.
So, then I looked up by grandma's dad, Nicholas, and was distressed to see that someone had given him two more wives!! What the heck?!! I was still reeling from the shock of Mary Elizabeth Holdaway Conrad marrying that Erastus guy without anyone telling me, and now here my polygamist great-grandfather had FOUR wives, and not just the two I grew up knowing about? The name associated with those postings on Family Search was my second cousin once removed, so I sent her a message asking about it. Here is her reply:
I think we have all wondered about that. All of his histories and anything I have seen written does not mention anything about it. The only thing I can figure is they must have been family friends or acquaintance from Switzerland. That is where they died and there is no mention of them ever coming to the USA. Nicholas was alive when the ordinances were preformed so he must have been part of whatever decision was made. After trying to find out about them, I decided that this is probably one of those times to just leave it be and hope we find out more in the hereafter. If you happen to find anything, please let me know. I would love to know, too. Thank you for contacting me. Good to meet another cousin. Loraine
Huh. Interesting. And so ends this episode of "Meet the Muhlesteins."
1 comment:
My grandmother was Mary Elizabeth so I liked reading about the Mary Elizabeths in your family. That's quite a write-up in that paper! :)
Cool about Tell's name...I was wondering about it, so I'm glad to find out why he had that name!
Post a Comment