Geneology and Browning

Geneology:

Some very interesting information was found at the Land and Records Office here in Nauvoo.  This is one of the historic sites, maintained by the residents of Nauvoo in the early days, and it contained all records pertaining to everyone who lived here at between 1838 and 1850. This included land and property records and transactions, family tree history, newspaper articles about them if any, and just about every document that might have mentioned or pertained to them.

We looked up Pam's Great-Great Grandfather, Col. Chester Loveland, Pam's Grandmother's grandfather. We knew he had lived in Nauvoo for a short time, but we had no idea of the details.  When we pulled up his records in the Land and Records office, we found 60 pages of material about him.  We found two generations of HIS ancestors that we had not even known existed. This means that for that line of Pam's geneology, we now have 7 generations back. One of his wives was Fanny Call, Pam's great-great grandmother. They were married and sealed in the Nauvoo Temple just a few days before the Mormons left Nauvoo for Salt Lake City under threat of extinction.

There is a lot written about Col. Loveland, who was a major figure in the Nauvoo Legion, and later, an important pioneer and church leader in Brigham City, Utah.  This will be great fun reading and we will be glad to share all we find as we dig into these records.

We did find one fascinating piece of history as we looked through Col. Loveland's records.  It turns out that he sold a piece of property in the Nauvoo area in the late 1840's, and there is a deed concerning the transfer.  The deed was notarized by a man named.........Abraham Lincoln.........yes...the real Honest Abe himself....who at that time, ( about 20 years before becoming President), was a Notary Public and Justice of the Peace in the area.  How is THAT for finding something noteworthy.  Wish I had that original deed with that original signature........  More about this later.

Jonathon Browning

Coincidence...but we now know that both Joseph Smith and Jonathan Browning  had met Abraham Lincoln in the Quincy area in about 1841. Jonathan Browning, a young gunsmith from Brushy Fork, Tennessee, moved to Quincy, Ill., a  river town on the Mississippi, around 1830. By 1834, Browning was a well-known gunsmith in Quincy.  There, he invented the first repeating rifle. He became acquainted with the Mormons in Quincy when the Quincy residents took the Mormons into their homes in 1838 and saved them from the cruel winter. Jonathon had heard of Joseph Smith, and Jonathon traveled up to Nauvoo by steamboat to meet the Prophet and find out about the Church.  Jonathon decided to immediately become a member of the Church. Jonathon finished out his term as Justice of the Peace in Quincy, and in 1842, moved his family and his gunsmithing business up to Nauvoo.

The journals mention that Jonathon and Abraham Lincoln were friends.  Browning once told Abe that he, Jonathan, had traded a gun for a New Testament, only to find that half the pages of the New Testament were missing. Abe and Browning reportedly joked about Browning's getting the worst of that deal.

 The weapons Browning designed became legendary, and when he traveled to Salt Lake with the Pioneers, he and his sons continued the gunsmithing business, eventually licensing his patents to Colt, Winchester, and Remington, and selling firearms, including the Browning 45 semi-auto and 9 mm semi-auto to the military and to many of the law enforcement agencies of the world, who still use them today. The Brownings also invented the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) which was standard issue for the soldiers of the second world war, and thereafter.

Jonathan had wanted to join the Mormon Battalion, but Brigham Young asked him to remain in Council Bluffs, Iowa, to help the Mormons get west.  Thus, he and his family delayed going to Salt Lake for 5 years at the request of BrighamYoung, President of the Mormon Church in 1846, to assist the departing pioneers to obtain wagons and be ready for the long trip west.  Once in Utah, Jonathon and his family moved to the Ogden area, and the Browning corporate offices are still located in Morgan Utah, a few mile north and east of Ogden. The Brownings ended up with 22 children in Utah, (they had only 8 when they left Nauvoo.)

Miscellaneous:

We love it here.  Such an historic place. Something new to learn every day. We see the Nemecks and the Starrs (from our home ward in Idaho) on a regular basis, but we are in different casts for the productions.  We are being asked to do more and more as time goes by...Pam is now the Assistant Site Leader at the Lucy Mack Smith home, and I am the Assistant Site Leader at the Blacksmith Shop. I drive the horses several days each week, and that will increase as summer approaches and we get more visitors. 

We hope each of you are doing well, and we love to get emails from each of you so we can keep in touch with you individually. 

Here are a fews fun pictures.........the first is of the Nemecks, Starrs and Meiers in the Visitors Center in Nauvoo, and the other is of the same three couples dressed in our historic clothing goofing off on the stage at the Cultural Hall where the musical production "Rendezvous" is staged.  Our show costumes are different, but we all posed in the site clothing we wore today at our various assignments.

Take care....more next week.

Love to all,     Elder and Sister Meier ( Jerry and Pam)