Julia starts Kindergarten next year which will be all day so I thought I'd take classes at the community college to slowly work toward some kind of degree. That part isn't really set yet, but I figured I'd start now with a class each semester this year to get back in the swing of things. The one I'm taking this semester is called Religion In America. It's really interesting and I'm enjoying the information about what all the different religions believe, how they came about, etc.. The funny thing is that my teacher seems to like all of them, although some points she will disagree with in certain ones, overall she is very positive and respectful, until she got to the LDS church. She didn't have many positive things to say about my religion. She said not to "fall for it" when those young boys come to your door. What's funny is that she didn't seem to know a lot about it...at least some of the "facts" she gave were not quite right or misinterpreted. I didn't argue at all. I tend to be a little outspoken and Rich told me to keep my mouth shut and not to argue because that wouldn't do any good. That is true, but I did correct a fact or two that she got wrong. I did it very nicely too! I like my teacher, I just think she doesn't know enough about it. I get that there are some things that can be taken wrong and misunderstood and she seemed to get a hold of only those things.
She asked us to give a 10 min oral report on our family history and if there is any religious history in our family. Well, us Mormons tend to have a ton of family history and my family has a ton of religious history. I was going to talk about just one line of ancestors but as I was reading all of the stories of all the lines of my family I saw a cool thread. Most of them came to America for the freedom of religion and all of my direct lines ended up finding the same faith. So that is what I did my report on. She liked the history and didn't say anything about the Mormon part...that was nice. The following is my report.
I am fortunate to have had several relatives on both sides of my family do years of family history work. From their efforts, and a little of my own, I know when and why most of my ancestors came to America. Some came for the opportunity America offered but most came to freely practice their religion.
Ralph Hemenway came from England with other Puritans and settled in Roxbury, Virginia in 1633. He came as an indentured servant at age 22 as a way to pay for his passage but within a year he was a free man. Another year after that he bought many acres of land and became one of the largest land owners and tax payers in the town. He must have been very kind and felt that education was important. He gave large sums of his money to support the first Roxbury Free School and to Harvard. He also supported the Roxbury Latin School which was founded in 1645 by John Eliot. Eliot's vision for the school was to educate Blacks, Whites, and Indians as equals and to teach them godly citizenship and the importance of public service. They even made provisions for poor boys whose families couldn't afford the tuition so that they could attend.
Ralph and his wife, Elizabeth Hewes Hemenway, had 7 children. Their descendants were involved in the development of the Massachusetts and Connecticut Colonies and in the American Revolution. Two of their descendants were Presidents of the United States; Taft and Nixon. My direct line runs through men who were businessmen, inventors, farmers and some Methodist Ministers. Beginning in 1844 with Luther Singleton Hemenway, my 4th Great Grandfather, my line became members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (also called the LDS Church or the Mormons) and the family moved to Utah and Idaho. Ralph Hemenway, the original immigrant on this line of our family, came to America for the Puritan Utopian ideal and the freedom to practice his religion.
Johannes Friedrich, or John Frederick as it became, was a Quaker who came to Lancaster County, PA in the early 1700s from Germany. His son, Abraham, joined the Moravian Church at age 21 after hearing missionaries from Herrhut, Germany preach. Abraham disowned his son, also named Abraham, after he joined the Patriots and fought in the Revolutionary War which was against Moravian beliefs. Sadly Abraham Jr died in the war. Somewhere in the generations that followed my line became Methodist and they moved about every generation to different states from PA to VA to OH and MO. I believe many were farmers and they were trying to find the best place to farm. My Great Grandpa, John Henry, was a farmer in MO but moved to NE to get away from the "old clay hills" and to find better farmland. His son, my Grandpa, Howard Frederick, married a Mormon girl in Nebraska and they moved to Utah because it was the Depression and work was hard to find. Her uncle said he could find Grandpa a job so they headed to Salt Lake where he worked in the mines for several years. Eventually John Henry moved to Utah to be closer to his son Howard and he took a job as a janitor in the Methodist Church in Ogden and worked there until he retired. Howard and his family eventually moved to Oregon where he joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and became a Bishop. Again the original immigrant on this line came for the freedom of religion and his descendants eventually found their way to the LDS Church.
Nathan Staker was a Methodist Minister in Ontario, Canada in the 1830s. He had a young daughter who was dying of an illness but he was a man of great faith and he believed that God could save her. He spent two days fasting and he prayed many times a day in the woods near his home. On the second day he was praying by a log and he said he saw a light and an angel came to him, laid his hands on his head and blessed him. The angel said in the blessing that his child would recover and live a long life and that he would preach the Gospel of Christ to many people. Nathan immediately went home where he related the experience to his wife and the next morning his daughter was greatly improved and soon fully recovered.
Some time later Nathan met Parley P Pratt and Brigham Young who told him about Joesph Smith who had also prayed in the woods and saw God the Father and Jesus Christ who told him that he would restore the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Since Nathan had previously seen the angel and because he felt that the doctrine taught by them more fully explained Christ's Gospel he joined the church and moved to Kirtland, OH to be near the rest of the church membership. Because of persecution in OH the family moved with the rest of the members to MO and then again to IL after Governor Boggs of MO issued an executive order to have the Mormons run out of MO or be killed. About this time Nathan returned to Canada on a mission to teach the rest of his family the Gospel, which many of them joined and they all returned to IL with him. After continued persecution in IL and after the Prophet Joseph Smith was shot and killed by a mob the family moved with the church to Utah. Nathan's wife died along they way of Small Pox but Nathan and his children made it to Utah. A few years after arriving he remarried (only one wife) and he helped settle Pleasant Grove and Mt Pleasant, UT. He was known for his faith, kindness and generosity. He taught school in between planting and harvesting seasons, often with out pay. His storage of food was always open to those who were in need. Several times when he was working in his fields and orchards he would encounter Indians and would give them his pot of mutton and dumplings and go hungry himself. This fostered respect and trust between them and he never had problems with the Indians. He came to America because of his beliefs and the desire to be close to others who shared his faith.
The last of my direct line who came to America was my Great Grandpa, Torjus Arnold Prestgard who came from Norway with his mother in 1900. His mother, Alvilde Josephine Noren Prestgard, had lived in MN with her brother for a few years before she was married. She learned English there then returned to Norway. She married Asmund Prestgard in 1889 and they lived in Roldal, Norway. In 1890 Arnold was born. Alvilde worked in a hotel in Oslo as an interpreter since she knew English and Arnold helped his dad on the farm. The Norwegian winters were very cold. One winter when Arnold did his early morning chores on the farm the edges of his ears froze and fell off.
Arnold's dad died in 1898 when he was 8 years old. A year later Alvilde met Mormon Missionaries and believed their message. Both Alvilde and Arnold were baptized in 1899. Alvilde's only close living relative was her brother in America and Asmund's family didn't support her choice to join the Mormon Church so in 1900 they moved to America to be closer to her brother and to the majority of the members of the church. They settled in Idaho where she remarried and Arnold was raised and eventually he raised his family. They came to America to start a new life and to be close to people who shared their faith.
All of my direct lines of ancestors had different faiths and came from different countries but they shared the desire to practice their beliefs freely. They all came to America, the only place they could all find and live whatever religion they felt to be true. Eventually all of the lines I am from found the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and were blessed to be in America to freely live the Gospel it teaches.
