I have been preparing my Sunday School lesson for FAMILY TREE .  The focus is how to  release reserved  Family File Names from the Temple list and keep control of the names until they are finished.  I found this from Elder Scott:

 

Many faithful Church members have done the work of researching their family lines and are using the reserve feature of FamilySearch to hold the ordinances for their own family members to serve as proxy, Elder Scott said"There are currently 12 million names and millions of corresponding ordinances that are reserved," he added. "Many names have been reserved for years. ... We encourage those of you who have a large reservation of names to share them so that members of your extended family or ward and stake can help you in completing that work."

 

  So I am going to release  all my names that have reserved  for over a year.. 

So any cards you have out there will no longer be valid.  I will keep control of the names until the work is done .

I have been blessed with  finding  more and more of our family that need ordinances.  If you need some family names I can release them to you.  Then you can print out the FOR and  take it to the temple.

I thank you for all the work you have done.  I am sure you were blessed as you blessed our dead.

 

Personal testimony:   When researching give credence to family traditions.

When my cousin Wilma Jeanne Hatcher was dying of  Lou Gehrig’s disease I told  that when she got to the spirit world to wake up our Welsh ancestors so I could find them.  I think  is she doing it because for over 45 years I have not been able to find where our Evans family came from in Wales.

 

My Aunt Mary Williams told me that my Welsh  immigrant great great grandparents Erasmus Evans and wife Catherine Jones were buried  about 1855 in a cemetery next to Bumkin School in Caseyville, IL.  She also told me that some years after their death the city rebuilt the school and took the tombstones and used them for school steps.  I hired a researcher in Caseyville and she did not find any reference to a cemetery at that location.

You can google this to read the rest of it.

The EVANS Family -- North Wales to Caseyville, Illinois

ERASMUS and CATHERINE EVANS came to the U.S. on 9 June 1845 aboard the General Veazie out of Liverpool via New Orleans (the family was heading to Wisconsin).  Erasmus was born in Wales abt 1788 and died between 1845 and 1850 in St. Louis; he was a farmer in Bangor, Caernarvonshire, Wales in 1841. Catherine was born in North Wales about 1795, living in St. Louis in 1850 with sons Griffith, John and Owen; living in Caseyville, Illinois in 1855, deceased by 1860.  In 1855 she is living next door to daughter Mary Evans and her husband, Lewis Morris.  On 15 Sep 1854 Catherine was arrested for bootlegging and was bailed out by Lewis Morris, paying $100 for her fine.  Another possible son or nephew for Catherine is D. Evans, living nearby her in the 1855 census (age 40-50, a wife age 30-40 and 2 male children ages 10-20, 1 female age 0-10, 1 female age 10-20 (if so, he didn’t come to America with the family).  Children of Catherine and Erasmus were:

 

About 4 years ago I made contact (through Ancestry.com) with Allison, another Evans descendent.  She had a similar story about a cemetery where her family used to go to picnic when they took flowers  let the children would go there to play.   But, she did not have a location.  Her great grandmother , Mary Evans Morris was buried with her parents, our Erasmus and Catherine.  

Until we connected she did not have a location for the cemetery.

We have several  ancestors that have had problems with alcohol.  Our Catherine Jones Evans was arrested for bootlegging  whiskey.  Her son in law Lewis Morris bailed her out of jail.  He beat his wife, Mary Evans Morris to death and died in prison.

 Fortunately Allison was going to Caseyville to visit family.  She met up with another cousin and they went  searching.  The farmer who owned the land told them there was no cemetery.  They persevered and found  the cemetery without tomb stones.  It was overgrown with bramble.

I had the location and Allison had the story that gave enrichment to  the family story.

Since then I have been able to find the birth place of Erasmus Evans in   Glascoed, Llannddeiniolen, Caernarvoinshnire,Wales.  I even found pictures on google of the  Glascoed house that was built in 1623.  It is still inhabited

Through Ancestry.com I found a distant cousin Brenda, whose family never left Wales. 

She  sent me some of her records.  She  still lives near Glascoed, Wales. She emailed  me  a published pedigree,  “The Griffith Pedigrees”, that connected my Erasmus’s Evans to his ancestors.  When I put his father, Richard Griffith Evans, into Family Tree to provide them temple ordinances I found two missing links that I completed using the Griffith Pedigrees as my source.

According to Family Tree this connected my Erasmus to his line that goes back to the 1105  to Brun, Lord of Menei, Angelesy, Wales.  (If you want to believe it) the Family Tree shows a  line that goes back to Joseph of Arimathia, uncle of the Virgin Mary.

I am just finishing up a quilt I made for my generous neighbor who provided me with a printer and much of her time helping me with my computer stuff.

I will be mailing pillow cases for all our great grandchildren this next week.

Open them whenever you want.

We love you all and pray for you everyday.

Grandma Finley