Picture is of my grammie, Louise Mathewson, at 18!When I was younger my grandmother, Laura Louise Mathewson Dye, spent hours with me talking about her family. She would get out a big box of photos and go thru them one by one, telling me who everyone was. She shared her mother's journals with me and a journal that she herself kept while she was in nursing school. She told me that she didn't know much about "her people" because her mother was older when she had her (42 years, 10 months and 21 days old!) and most of her grandparents were already gone. She also didn't know about "Daddy's people", (meaning my grandfather's family) because only his mother was alive when they got together and I guess they didn't talk about family. Anyway, Grammie always wished that she knew more about her family, and told me that she hoped I would be interested enough someday to find out about where we all came from.
Well, I've been doing just that for about 10 years now. Most recently, I have spent hours and hours and hours researching and compiling data on my maternal grandmother's family. I feel like I've spent time with them, yet I wish I had much more information. I've even been collecting old postcards of the towns they lived in, the churches and hospitals and schools they attended. I am hoping to make a huge scrapbook, but it may take me another ten years to do this.
This October, I was able to do an amazing thing: I was able to have all the LDS ordinances done for several women on my maternal grandmother's side: my grandma, her mother, her mother's sister, her mother's mother in law, her mother's grandmother, and her grandfather's first wife. I was blessed to have several worthy men in my ward help me to get the ordinances done for all of those women's husbands. There are now at least 6 families who are on their way to becoming eternal families, after being dead for so long. Think of it: my great-grandmother's grandmother and her husband were sealed together for all eternity and had their children sealed to them as well!! (I discovered that all of the children in that family had their ordinances done, but were never sealed to their parents!? Think of the joy they experienced that day when they were all finally sealed!) It was an unbelievable opportunity, and I am grateful for the blessings of the restored gospel and priesthood, and a living, loving Heavenly Father that has provided a way for families to be together forever.
Well, I've been doing just that for about 10 years now. Most recently, I have spent hours and hours and hours researching and compiling data on my maternal grandmother's family. I feel like I've spent time with them, yet I wish I had much more information. I've even been collecting old postcards of the towns they lived in, the churches and hospitals and schools they attended. I am hoping to make a huge scrapbook, but it may take me another ten years to do this.
This October, I was able to do an amazing thing: I was able to have all the LDS ordinances done for several women on my maternal grandmother's side: my grandma, her mother, her mother's sister, her mother's mother in law, her mother's grandmother, and her grandfather's first wife. I was blessed to have several worthy men in my ward help me to get the ordinances done for all of those women's husbands. There are now at least 6 families who are on their way to becoming eternal families, after being dead for so long. Think of it: my great-grandmother's grandmother and her husband were sealed together for all eternity and had their children sealed to them as well!! (I discovered that all of the children in that family had their ordinances done, but were never sealed to their parents!? Think of the joy they experienced that day when they were all finally sealed!) It was an unbelievable opportunity, and I am grateful for the blessings of the restored gospel and priesthood, and a living, loving Heavenly Father that has provided a way for families to be together forever.
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