One of the best parts of homeschooling is that you can take awesome field trips any time you want, any where. We've been learning about Utah geography, and since we are familiar with the Basin and Range country where we live, and the Middle Rocky Mountain country just past Salt Lake, we decided to explore the third physiogeographic region of Utah, the Colorado Plateau.
This whole block has been intimately tied up with family history, for me. It was easy to find ancestors' stories to illustrate many of the aspects of history and geography that I wanted to highlight. On our way down to southern Utah, we took a detour through Manti. We were able to see the spot at the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon where the Spanish friars would have come out of the canyon and had their first glimpse of Utah Lake. Manti was an important stop on our trip because my great-great-great grandparents were among the original settlers. My great-great-great grandmother gave birth to the first white child born in the area, in a wagon box in the middle of a snow storm, in 1849. Manti also was a perfect example of one of Brigham Young's planned colonies. So me made Manti our lunch-stop.
I had read that my great-great-great grandparents had lived across the street from the Old Manti City Hall for a time. It was completely by accident that we stopped at a nice little park next to an old building for lunch. We didn't know what the building was until I ventured over the look at the sign: it's the Old Manti City Hall! Who knew?
Their first home was a dugout similar to this replica, built into the temple hill. They were in a hurry to find shelter for the winter, having arrived in November. In the spring when the snow melted, the rattlesnakes appeared--in the walls, on mantels, in pots, everywhere you could imagine.
The temple was a fixture in their lives. My great-great grandmother left her young children in the care of others for six months to be a temple worker. I can't even imagine!
After Manti, we continued on to "Wayne County", as my grandpa always referred to those small towns in that county. He never called them by their individual names. We stayed in some cabins in Teasdale. My great-grandfather's older brother lived in Teasdale in the late 19th century. Everywhere we went on this trip, I felt the spirits of my ancestors in abundance. I only wished that my children (who are adopted) could have that same experience. I've been feeling a huge sense of the loss of their birth family histories. Especially for Dallin, since he's the one who is old enough to understand. I wished I could tell him more stories about his biological ancestors to go along with this block.
This was our cabin.
Preston, cute as ever.
The view out our back door.
The children saw jackrabbits, lizards galore, cacti, chipmunks... We had pine trees right outside our door with pinenuts ready to be picked. Too bad I wasn't making pesto!
Hiking less than a mile up the road from our cabin.
Preston, so cute, rounded a corner, saw the red cliffs in the background, and pointed, "Oooh!"
This is the school in Torrey where I'm sure my grandpa taught school. It was build in 1916, he taught in Torrey in the late 1920's.
Part 2 to come, Capitol Reef...
Comments
How's Preston doing with speech and development things?
Preston "graduated" from speech! He had his year assessment in August, and while he could have still continued in therapy since he was already in their program, they told us that if this had been his initial evaluation, he would not qualify. We decided to stop. I really hated early intervention and for the past six months had felt that he was progressing just fine. I realized that his speech level and progression was really about the same as what Dallin was doing at those ages--and Dallin talks just fine. He would still be considered to have a mild delay, but he is talking more and more all the time. In fact, this week he learned to say NO, and he also said his first complete sentence, which was "You go away! Riah away!" (said to Sariah when she wouldn't stop trying to play with his trains, lol!)
I learned a lot about your family history in this post. I told Vince some of the stuff and he made profound utterances like "Oh. Yeah."
I can see how not knowing the kids' biological family histories could be disheartening. Did you know that the ancestors for whom I have been doing temple work for these past few years are not my biological ancestors? My grandfather's biological father turned out to be a bigamist and left my great grandmother and she remarried into the Benzel family--it is the Benzels who are the German-Russians I love so much. I sometimes wonder about the biological line but it does not inspire me to much action. I feel a genuine love and kinship for the people who took my grandfather and gave him the best life has to offer. I am grateful to have been adopted into their line and I'm sure that to some degree your kids and their posterity will have similar feelings. I'm sure that their biological histories will be of interest to them but the truth of the matter is that Your history IS their history. They will love having the connection to the family and I think it's awesome you are teaching it to them! And me!