Passages I did not report

Mary Jean Backman Alley passed away June 2018 in Bountiful, Utah. A daughter of LeGrand Pollard Backman and Edith Mary Price, she was the second of five children. She married John R. "Jack" Alley in 1944 in Salt Lake City. Jack passed away in 2007.

After children began to arrive the family moved to Bountiful, where Mary Jean lived in the same home for seventy years. This was remembered as the center of the "Alley Universe". That universe included her seven children. All seven, with their father were there to see Mary Jean receive her bachelors degree in education, with which she taught third grade for 24 years.

Perhaps staying in one home reflects on the many travels Mary Jean did while growing up as well as the years of her husband's military assignments during WWII. Recall that she lived in South Africa while her father was Mission President there for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The church held much meaning for Mary Jean throughout her life, where she held positions in Primary, Young Women  and Relief Society organizations. Daughters of Utah Pioneers and University Women were other valued associations.

Mary Jean Backman Alley left her seven children, twenty-one grandchildren and forty-six great grandchildren and one great-great grandson.

Mary Jean's sister Beverly Backman Davis lost her husband Robert Edward Davis on April 22, 2018 in Salt Lake City. The 23rd would have been the sixty-sixth wedding anniversary for Bob and Beverly.

Born in Sugar House, Salt Lake County, his family remembered him as always able to "initiate, innovate and create." Such character as a child of the Great Depression would develop.

Bob served the United states in the military, and was part of the Army Band at Fort Lee, Virginia.
Music was a life long part of life, studying classical piano in childhood, he played trombone in school and formed jazz band as early as age eleven and played around Salt Lake for many years as an adult. He also was the 'go to' jazz pianist for big name performers when they came to Salt Lake City.

Bob created his own business, Davis Printing, which became the family business for over 30 years.

Robert Edward Davis was survived by is wife, four children, twenty-one grandchildren.

I got to know Bob while employed at the William E. Christoffersen Salt Lake Veterans Home. This circumstance enriched my life time and again, proving that I need treat others as if they were my family: and they just might be.

A Little Review, A Little Revision

I had not, prior to our get together on Memorial Day, printed out my blog entries.  And then read them. So I have rewritten some of my idiosyncratic word play and corrected obvious punctuation mishaps. You may not even notice, and on next reading it might not even jump out, my intention in the first place. I want you to remember the stories, not my grammar. Or my gaffs.

Losses I have missed or neglected: It has been a year now since Beverly Backman lost her husband, Robert Davis, and a few months later her only sister, Mary Jean Backman Alley.  Daughters of LeGrand Pollard Backman, thus grand daughters of Grace Pollard Backman, I will add a fuller account when I have the details in front of me.

Fifteenth Ward Chapel

This is the old 15th Ward Chapel at the current address of 900 West and 100 South in Salt Lake City. Someone asked about stain-glass windows. Obviously there had been some for which the framing is still there, but nothing of beauty is visible from outside.

Suddenly these stories are in living color!

It seems strange; none of us are Pollards, who have Joseph and Mary Ann as our progenitors. Their sons did not survive to found families while their seven daughters did. And those families have moved about. But when a few of us got together today in Salt Lake City we met a likable group.

Thank you James Backman for your forethought. Often  such an event as a bi-centennial slips right past, as if it hasn't taken 200 years to come around. This or that item has catches our attention this week or month and we think it must get done, looking away just as a "big" event comes up!

Jim was generous with his comments about my family history work, which I sometimes cannot help thinking where to just put it down and back away. After today though, I wonder how to put it into others' hands, how to make it available to those we haven't gotten together with. Yet.

I am not LDS. I do know however, that in that faith there is a powerful desire to gather. In 1855 it may have been to gather in a desert Zion as much as to gather as eternal families. Family lineage, then, is one means toward that accomplishment.

Famous for my eye-roll, I have had to accept that rash statement: "Oh, I have all that done!" or more frequently, "that's all been done". I beg to differ, I think.

About the going forward. My vision is that through family history I will develop a sense of belonging, and that others will also; a sense of being part of something important. My goal is to show where and how I belong, and with whom. I am in generation five in Joseph Pollard's family, but I want my nephews and nieces to know whence they come, and their children - perhaps especially.

I am nine generations away from the American Revolution. 9? I have nieces whose mother comes from families that were well established in New Spain (now New Mexico) earlier. 10?

I will show as many descendants in the seventh generation as I can, how they trace back to this pioneering family. I will learn all the names of those having the Bishop's Daughters as a 4th Great Grandmother. Seven generations.

Well, back to work then!