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Elijah Moments: Handwork History

3/19/2014

 
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From LDS News

For years my mother worked to learn more of her great-grandmother Hortense Rogers' family. Hortense's father, Henry Rogers, died at a relatively young age, leaving his wife, Ann Slade, and two daughters that we knew of, one being Hortense. The 1830 census of Chenango County, N.Y., listed Ann Rogers (married name) as the head of family with two daughters. Ann was converted and was baptized by Hyrum Smith as part of the Colesville Branch. She eventually made her way to Nauvoo with her youngest daughter, Hortense. The elder daughter, whose name . . . 

we did not know, was left with Ann's brother who promised to bring the older daughter West in the spring, but she never saw that daughter again.

Later, Ann married Henry Alanson Cleveland, and was sealed in the Nauvoo Temple. They immigrated to Utah with the Robert Wimmer Company. Ann and her second husband had three children. Nothing more was known of Ann Slade's family.

After my mother's death in 2002, I inherited her family history papers. After unsuccessful efforts to find out more about the Henry Rogers and Ann Slade family, I placed an inquiry on a genealogy message board seeking information. Several years passed with no response.

Then, in September 2011, I received an email from a woman living in Portland, Ore. She often peruses local antique and consignment shops on her lunch hour looking for things identifiable to a family and attempts to help reunite those items with the family they came from. She found a delicate piece of framed needlework entitled "Family Record" embroidered in 1834.

After doing an Internet search, this woman found the inquiry I had left years ago and contacted me. With the information she provided I was able to purchase the framed embroidery. This "Family Record" had the information I had been seeking. I now had Henry Rogers' birth and death dates, his wife Ann Slade Rogers' birth date, and the birth dates of their three children, Byron, Helen and Hortense. There was no previous knowledge that Byron even existed because he had died at 15 months of age, and his death date was embroidered on this "Family Record." Helen Rogers was the older daughter whose name we did not know, and she is the one who embroidered this precious "Family Record" at age 9.

With joy, my husband and I completed the temple work for this family. I am certain of the Lord's hand in preserving this delicate piece of handwork for 178 years. — Susan M. Lemmon, Olympus 2nd Ward, Salt Lake Olympus Stake


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