No, no. I'm not one of those stars in the genealogy firmament that may warrant a real stalker. However, I myself am not above "stalking" one of my ancestors on Google! You can find out so much about someone just by typing their name into the Google Search.
Last night Tony brought up a random bag of things that I had stuck in the basement at some point. In it was a lovely book about The Davis Family of Lehi, UT. I read some of the pioneer stories to Tony who has no experience with pioneer heritage other than knowing when Pioneer Day is (because I put it on our calendar).
The head of this family was Elisha Hildebrand Davis, Sr. When I typed his name into Google this morning, I saw quite a few people that had listed him in their genealogy. I wasn't too interested in that since my goal (at least for now) was not to find distant cousins - and when you're going back to someone born in 1815 - that was "distant" enough to me. Anyway, I found an interesting item labeled "Bartholomew." Now, to be honest, that title did not make me too interested in clicking through. However, it showed this little blurb after the title: just a month after George Coleman, by Elder Elisha Hildebrand Davis. In 1846 Brother Hawkins became the first person to represent the He-. I have to admit that I was now a little intrigued. I recalled vaguely that EHD Sr had been on a mission in England. I wondered if this would tell me more. So I clicked through.
What I found was an article entitled, "THE PATTERNS OF MISSIONARY WORK AND MIGRATION IN NINETEENTH CENTURY BUCKINGHAMSHIRE, ENGLAND." Well that sounded slightly promising - at least it was missionary work in the right country! The article was from the International Journal of Mormon Studies. Hmm... I didn't even know that journal existed, let alone that it could hold genealogical treasures for me. The article was in .pdf format, and I was able to search for "elisha" bringing up first this paragraph:
James Hawkins, from Pitstone, Buckinghamshire, also joined the Church in Hemel Hempstead. He was baptized in October 1845, just a month after George Coleman, by Elder Elisha Hildebrand Davis. In 1846 Brother Hawkins became the first person to represent the Hemel
Hempstead Branch at a Church conference held in London. He owned a bakery and a grocery store, which he sold to Samuel and Joy Claridge, thus enabling his family to emigrate to America in 1849.
I wondered if there were any additional mentions of my ancestor in this article, so I clicked on "find next in current pdf" and found this paragraph:
On April 4, 1846, Elder Elisha Hildebrand Davis, an American missionary and the President of the London Conference, baptized Benjamin Johnson, a native of Northall, Buckinghamshire, in the small community of Whipsnade, Bedfordshire. Whipsnade was less than eight miles north of Hemel Hempstead where Davis worked during the previous six months. Benjamin’s wife, Charlotte, also a Buckinghamshire native, was baptized three weeks later, on April 27, 1846, by Elder Thomas Squires, another local convert. Squires had been serving in the Hemel Hempstead Branch Presidency as a counselor to George Smith.
Interesting! I did not realize that EHD Sr was the President of the London Conference. I knew his wife was from England, and I recognized the name "Whipsnade." I started wondering if that was where he met his wife. I looked in my file for "whipsnade" under places, and found about 6 individuals with links to Whipsnade. None of them were EHD Sr's wife, but most of them would have been adults around the time that EHD Sr was a missionary there. See how I am "stalking" EHD Sr?? I want to find out more - and this was just from one link on Google.
I clicked on "find next in current pdf" again and found this paragraph:
However, Johnson was only one of several local convert missionaries, all of whom enjoyed almost as much success. It seems that once the American or local missionaries had organized a small branch, they appointed recently baptized converts as lay ministers, and relied on them to bring in additional converts. Thus, Benjamin Johnson was the only person the American Elder, Elisha Hildebrand Davis, actually baptized and confirmed in any of the three branches the Johnsons
belonged to. In other words, the Edlesborough Branch continued to grow and prosper because of the efforts of recently baptized members who began serving as missionaries, some immediately following their baptism.
Not quite as directly interesting to me, but it does give a good idea of the proselyting strategies of the time. As this is an article from a journal, there are many sources for each paragraph. I have been skimming the resources to see if there is anything there I could look up as a primary source. I see more names that I recognize from my family history, such as "Studham." This helps me see that much of my English heritage could come from the same basic geographic location. I also found out that the Whipsnade Branch was later absorbed into the Edelsborough Branch. That could be helpful if I ever needed to find original church documents.
At this point, I did not find any more references when I searched on "elisha" in the document. I also, then, reconsidered my search strategy. I decided to search on "davis" instead because often missionaries are only called by last name. I found the same paragraphs as before, but also this one:
The first six Buckinghamshire natives to join the Church were not converted within the county, but in places to which they had relocated— either Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire or London. Four of these men, Samuel and George Smith, George Coleman and James Hawkins were baptized prior to their wives and children, but all of their family members eventually joined the Church and emigrated with them to America to help build Zion. Five were brought into the
Church through the efforts of elders sent from America, Lorenzo Snow, John W. Lewis, and E.H. Davis–while one of their conversions was brought about through the efforts of Berrill Covington, a recent and local convert. The involvement of recent converts in missionary activity established a pattern that continued in Buckinghamshire throughout the nineteenth century–a phenomenon that will be more closely examined throughout this paper.
So that was good background info on the other paragraphs I had already found. I scanned through the rest of the article and found interesting things like tables showing the percentage of people that were Mormon in each location, and the percentage of LDS members that emigrated from each 19th-century branch. All of this served to give me a better idea of EHD Sr.'s mission experience! You can bet that I saved a copy of that .pdf document as well as bookmarked the article in my browser.
At that point, I went back to my original Google Search results and kept looking. I found, among other things, that Elisha Hildebrand Davis Jr. (EHD's son) is mentioned in a book called "Remembering Joseph: Personal Recollections of those who knew the Prophet Joseph Smith." I'll have to check that book out the next time I'm in Utah. It could give me some more great information. So, I recommend that you try a little genealogy stalking too. You won't regret it!
