Some Family history stuff

Last week my aunt Marilyn passed away from Lou Gehrig's Disease. She was my mother's sister just older than her. Unfortunately I didn't know her well at all, she lived in Washington and I've seen her only a couple of times in the last 20 years. Even so, I've been thinking about her and her family a lot the past few days and have been a little sad.

This morning I was on the floor doing some situps (go me!) and saw a binder with the Barrus Family History (my mother's side) that my sister put together years ago. For some reason I just picked it up to start reading and I've been looking through it throughout the day today. It was just what I needed to cheer myself up. I was just blown away at the information that this side of my family has. I had looked at this binder before, but never really studied it or read all of the written histories- so cool!
I'm sure it's super boring for everyone else, but I loved looking at the names (Olive Amelia -isn't that cute? and Experience Ormsby- poor thing) and dates (there's one from 1703!!) and places (Utah, Idaho, Massachusetts, England, Norway, Sweden, and Scotland). I had no idea I have roots in early American History (many were born in the New England area in the late 1700's, one George Washington Hastings was named after George Washington, whom his father fought with in the Revolutionary war), and also in the early church history (one of my ancestors was baptized by Wilford Woodruff and he later helped build the Mansion House for Joseph Smith in Nauvoo, another was working at a farm where Joseph Smith was staying for a visit in Pennsylvania in 1833 and joined the church then, I have a ton of pioneers that came to UT, a few polygamists, and some of the first missionaries- one in the first Hawaiian mission with George Q Cannon).

Cool huh?