Founders of Kaysville the Greens

The above and below photos are the graves of James Green and Maria Colemere Green.

James Green was born in 1844 in Nauvoo, IL and emigrated with his parents to Deseret.

It was refreshing for once to see the wife's grave a little more prominently displayed than the husband's.

 These two graves are for John Hyrum Green and for Susannah Phillips. John Hyrum Green and his family were some of the original settlers of Kaysville, UT. John Hyrum Green is Debbie's 4th great Grandfather.  He and his family were converted at Benbow farms in England by Wilford Woodruff. His brother-in-law Edward Phillips joined the church first and introduced it to John and his family.
John and Edward were looking for Livestock Range, so the cattle wouldn't have to be kept in Salt Lake City and they helped settle what is now known as Kaysville.

Finding these graves in Kaysville Cemetery was a little more challenging. We had to return several times and keep walking until we found it. 

There are several good websites to help fins graves. www.findagrave.com is good. It helps you to see pictures and makes it easy to know what cemetery the person I located in.

www.namesinstone.com makes it really easy to find the general location of the grave.

My dad, Dr. Randall Jarvis Gee

I realized one of the great things about Facebook and blogs is that I can find photos without actually having them on my computer. Dad passed away Aug 4, 2011. He is interred at the Coe Ridge Cemetery established 1845.  The above picture is Summer and I with my father in 2011 in Ohio at Timmy Gee's baptism. We were fortunate to get 1 picture of the kids with their grandpa.


This was probably Dad's last fishing trip at the Clinton Community Ponds in August of 2010. Nothing was caught that day.




This is a picture of my Dad with Kendall and Kevin and my mom.

Christmas 2007? I think Grandpa is holding Steven. The man definetly loved his Grandchildren.
                                                                                                                                                            GEE DR. RANDALL JARVIS GEE, age 74, passed away Aug. 4, 2011. Beloved husband of Janet (nee Erickson) for 42 years. Dear father of Kevin (Jennifer), Kendall (Carinne), Karen Berks (Benjamin), the late Keith, Kent (Alicia), Karl (Deborah), Kyle (Kirsten), and Kurt (Jillayne). Dear grandfather of 22, including the late grandson Alex. Dear brother of Marcia Conner (John), Marilyn Fronk (Rulon), Richard (Kim), Robert (Debbie) and the late Ronald (Beverly) and Roland (Kathleen). Dr. Gee was born in Salt Lake City, UT to the late Keith Wardell Gee and Melba May Jarvis Gee. Graduate of Utah State University, Ph.D. from Wayne State University, MI. Biology professor at Cleveland State University, 1970-1996. Taught many nursing students at Huron Road and Metro Hospitals. He and his family delivered newspapers for the Cleveland Plain Dealer for 23 years. Lifetime involvement in Scouting. Received the Silver Beaver Award from the Greater Cleveland Council of the Boy Scouts of America. His sons and son-in-law are all Eagle Scouts. Randy loved fishing, camping and spending time with family and friends. He will be deeply missed. PLEASE VISIT WITH THE FAMILY ON THURSDAY from 4-8 PM and on FRIDAY from 11-12:30 PM. All are welcome to attend the funeral on Friday at 1 PM. Please note the visitations and the funeral service are at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 25000 Westwood Rd., Westlake, OH. Interment at Coe Ridge Cemetery, North Olmsted, OH. Contributions may be made to: Boy Scouts of America, Greater Cleveland Council, 2241 Woodland Ave., Cleveland, OH 44115. Arrangements by BUTLER & SON FUNERAL HOME (216-226-0811). 

This is the obituary of Dad that appeared in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Dr. Randall Jarvis Gee

Eulogy for Randall Jarvis Gee (March 9, 1937-August 4, 2011)
Faculty Senate, Cleveland State University, September 14, 2011
Delivered by Jeffrey Dean/BGES Chair
Dr. Randall Jarvis Gee, an emeritus faculty member of our department and retired since 1997, died August 4th, 2011 at the age of 74.
As a preface to my remarks, let me say that he retired while the department was just biology and before I came to CSU, but that his family and other members of the department have provided me with the information for these remarks.
Randall Gee was born March 9th, 1937, in Salt Lake City. His father was a firefighter; his mother was a homemaker. Neither one had a college degree.  As a high school student, Randy ran track and ran well. As a senior, he was part of the 1955 State champion 4x400 meter relay and medley relay. This talent earned him a track scholarship to Westminster College in Salt Lake, which, in turn, put him on a path to academia. So Randy and several siblings, like many of his CSU students, were the first generation in his family to graduate from college.
Randy graduated from Utah State University with a BS in Zoology.  He pursued doctoral studies at Wayne State University and began teaching at Highland Park College in Detroit. In 1969, he graduated with a PhD in Medical Microbiology and Parasitology. He joined CSU as an Assistant Professor in 1970 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1974. His research was on the nervous system of parasites in the Acanthocephala—the spiny-headed or thorny-headed worms, but his primary love was teaching. Besides parasitology, he taught microbiology, introductory biology, and anatomy and physiology both here and to nursing students at Huron Road and Metro Hospitals. Many former students remembered his courses fondly, due to his humor, his stories or rather case studies often featuring his family, and his knowledge and enthusiasm. He was proud of his teaching and believed strongly that good teaching at all levels, including college, should be highly valued. He was rigorous, and once without hesitation gave the son of a close friend the ‘F” the boy earned and not the “D” he had missed by a point. He was a man of strong faith, but saw no contradiction between faith and science; he had little patience with those who disparaged “evolution” as just a “theory”. Later in life, as his health failed, he often encountered former students working as nurses and never failed to ask what grade they had earned in his anatomy and physiology course.
He married Janet Erickson in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1968. Together they had eight children: 7 boys and 1 girl. Apart from his children, he was devoted to his faith, to fishing, and to Scouting. The Greater Cleveland Council of the BSA awarded him a Silver Beaver Award in 1989 for his contributions to Scouting in the Cleveland area. All of his sons and his son-in-law are eagle scouts. In many other ways his children have carried on his academic, pedagogical, inventive, and do-it-yourself home builder streaks. They have 13 degrees, including a PhD, a JD, and a PhD-in-progress (ABD). These degrees led to careers in such fields as elementary school teaching, technology consulting, teaching and research in computer science and acoustics, commercial construction, retail management, law, and accounting.
Randy must have taught his children a lot of biology over the dinner table, because son Kevin recounts coming to CSU as an eighth grade student and doing well on one of his father’s introductory biology exams. In fact, Randy often brought his kids to CSU, particularly to keep an unobtrusive eye on students taking exams in his large classes. He occasionally employed them to grade multiple choice tests. Son Kevin noticed that even then biology multiple choice exams might be described as “tricky” and that his father’s humor and rigor might lead to all true-false questions on an exam being true.  But he came away impressed by how his “dynamic, funny, self-effacing”  father could capture and hold the attention of even a 7AM class, and also convinced that a career in science was the coolest thing ever.
Besides the testimonials from his students perhaps two final remarks serve to characterize Randall Gee. One is an appreciation from a colleague in position to judge, who remarked “that Randy really knew his parasites.” This is special praise if you know how complex parasites and their life cycles can be. The second is a quote from an article in the Plain Dealer in March, 2004, when he--at age 67--and his youngest son finally gave up the family paper route after nearly 23 years.  The headline was “Extra! ‘Paperboy’ calls it a career”. The story went on to say that the Gees don’t “toss” newspapers. The quote from Randy is “Never did. It just seemed sloppy and not a good thing for the customers”. From what I can tell, he took the same approach to his teaching.
Thank you for your attention.

The originals

I know we have spent a lot of time at the Kaysville cemetery. It gets that way because there a lot of names, a lot of old markers, and when you are there, there is no one to ask for help.

There are several great websites, findagrave.com is an excellent resource. Most of the family graves are already on there. This helps quite a bit, but if you don't know exactly where the grave is at, it can be daunting. Plus our ancestors, seemed to only like a handful of names so you can run into 10 George's, or 6 marie's. Or worse all they have are the initials.

 

The gravestone above is of Joseph Hill. He was a captain of ten during the Mormon exodus to the west. He helped settle Kaysville. His wife Edith Marston, is buried on the plains, not on the trek to Utah but near Carson city. He was known as Cap Hill for the rest of his life. This particular grave took us two tries, we kept getting the wrong row since we only had a poor photo to go off of. I didn't think we'd find it.

 

 

The above Obelisk was easy to find it marks where Christopher Layton is buried. He was a private in the Mormon Battalion, had 10 wives, was Stake President for the LDS church in AZ, and has a city named after him. His father Samuel Layton is mentioned on the obelisk and this is the closest thing we have for a grave for him.

 Debbie and the kids on memorial day, 2013.

 This is the grave of Caroline Cooper Layton, we were sure it was by the obelisk but couldn't figure out where. She passed away in Alberta, Canada and then was transported to Kaysville. Most of the other wives buried by Christopher are easy to identify with full names and dates, but this one just has initials.

 

The above grave we happened by accident. Is the grave of my brother-in law's father. We saw it and mentioned how it was a beautiful grave and then it turned out to be his.

Aultorest cemetery in Ogden

These are the graves of my 2nd great grandparents. Nathan John Harris was Lois Erickson's grandfather. Debbie and I attended the viewing of a relative and I realized that on the grounds should be Nathan John Harris and Emma Elvira Oakason Harris. The Aultorest memorial gardens is acres and acres. We knew approximately where he was buried but couldn't have found it without help!

Websters

Finishing up with the Websters in Kaysville cemetery. George Webster had two wives Christeanna Webster and Annie Latmer Webster. His parents were William Webster and Hannah Day Webster.
William and Hannah traveled to the USA from England on the Siddons in 1855.
William and Hannah are Deborah's 4th great grandparents.

Kaysville with the Hills

These are Leonard Hill's parents. Caroline Layton and Joseph William Hill.  These two graves are not part of the regularly scheduled tour that takes part on Memorial day. These are Debbie's 2nd great-grandparents.  It is interesting that several gravestones from this period have no decorations, sometimes not even the full name as evidenced

 

 

 

The two above are Joseph Hill and Ellen Sheen.   Without this new huge marker finding these two would have been very difficult.

 

 

Kaysville 2.0

The above two graves are M. Blanche's parents. This makes them Debbie's 2nd great-grandparents.
Annie Marie Green and George William Webster. The bottom grave is George Webster, George William's father. His wife's name was Christiana Elliott. For some reason I didn't get a photo even though family records say she is buried in Kaysville UT.

 

Until I started taking pictures I didn't even realize that there was a Blackhawk war.  Being the history fan that I am, looking at George William he was born during the Civil War, lived during the Spanish-American War, WWI and died after WWII. What I would give for some journals!

 

We also hunted for Leonard Hill's parents and grandparents. That post will have to wait until another day.

 

 

Kaysville Cemetery

On Memorial Day it is tradition that we drive to Kaysville, UT to visit some of Debbie's family graves.  It is a wonderful experience to visit with her Grandma and to see some of the family there.
The irony is even though we have done this for years, we still learn something new every time.

This is Debbie's grandpa's headstone, Glen Webster Hill. He passed away Sep 1993.  This is the first stop that we make at the Kaysville cemetery. Everyone gathers here. This year I noticed that there was a flag decorating the grave. I had not realized that Debbie's grandpa had served during WWII. Nor had she.  It seems that he was in the Marine Corps attending Officer Candidate School in Colorado. This was short lived as he was needed home on the farm. I never knew him but have never heard a disparaging word.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After meeting at Glen's grave we then go over to Glen's parents' graves;

 Leonard Hill and M. Blanche Webster

 

 

I had heard that Leonard had served in WWI. I wasn't aware of all the details. It seems that he was a member of the U.S. Army cavalry. By the time he made it overseas the war was over.

 

The normal family tour stops here. A couple of years ago Nancy, Debbie's mom had shown me where Blanche's parents and grandparents were buried.

 

 

 

 

Ogden City Cemetery

 

 

 

 

On Sunday after going to Ben Lomond cemetery, I wanted to check out Ogden City cemetery. We had never been.  I wanted to see the graves for Gilbert and Adaline Belnap, Arias Guy Belnap, etc.

We knew that some family members were located off of 1st Avenue and so we decided to take a look. note to family, a smart phone would have been really helpful.

Finding Gilbert and family wasn't difficult. I parked the car by accident right across from the grave. Also there is no parking so you have to know where you are going.

The above picture is the Belnap marker for Gilbert Belnap and family. This is the ancestor who joined the church in Kirtland, became a bodyguard to Joseph Smith, Jr., rode with Porter Rockwell, etc.

Unfortunately the pictures of Gilbert's actual grave did not come out. WE'll have to go back!

Gilbert is my 3rd great- Grandfather.  My Grandma Lois was a Belnap and he would have been her great-grandfather.

Our main reason for going was to find my great-grandparents grave. Arias Guy Belnap and Mabel Harris.

 

Every year we had visited Debbie's great-grandparents graves in Mona and Kaysville and I wanted to see where these were. These took forever to find. I knew the general location but it still took about 25 minutes to find.

 

Right close to them were two markers I hadn't known where there.

 

This is my Great-Aunt, the mother of Brian, Bruce and Steven Belnap.  I have to admit I didn't know her very well, but she has 3 great sons.

 

 

The above marker is for Martin Henderson Harris, not Martin Harris (one of the three witnesses of the Book of Mormon). I did not know this was here. It was a complete surprise. Martin H Harris was Mabel Harris' Grandfather, or my 3rd Great-Grandfather. He was a pioneer, crossed the plains and founded Harrisville, Utah.

There are more family graves in the Ogden City cemetery. We will have to go back and find them Lest we Forget.