Momentous Events

The last couple of days have been full of momentous events. First off, little Eliza visited Zion National Park over the weekend and became a park ranger!! She looks great in her ranger gear. Her auntie Ranger Tiff is so proud! I am quite jealous though because baby ranger uniforms include shorts--Mississippi ranger uniforms include polyester pants. She's so cute! I especially love the little deer attached to her belt.


The next momentous event occurred yesterday evening during Sunday dinner. Camden lost her first tooth!!! She is the first Taylor grandchild to lose a tooth, and everyone (especially Camden) was very excited. She requested that we all refer to her as "Without-Tooth Girl." Word on the street is that the Tooth Fairy visited her last night and left some presents but forgot to take the tooth. Maybe she'll come back tonight for the tooth (and leave more presents?). What an exciting Sunday dinner!

Then, today Camp Floyd received notification that we have been named by Reserve America Top 100 Family Destinations as one of America's top 25 Educational and Historical Facilities! We also made it in the top 50 best picnic areas, but that's not quite as cool as the top 25. That's a pretty big award. We are very excited, and we will proudly be displaying said award in the museum.

Even though Mark Twain never did stay at Camp Floyd, I still think it is one of Utah's best kept secrets (although it would be better if it wasn't such a secret). I can't believe how many important Civil War generals were stationed there right before the war began. I was doing some research on Camp Floyd's famous inhabitants today, and pictured here is one of the most famous (or infamous?) soldiers that was stationed in Utah. His name was Henry Heth, and he is considered to be the man who inadvertently started the Battle of Gettysburg. The crazy part is that Heth, who was a Confederate commander, accidentally ran into Union cavalryman John Buford at Gettysburg, and even though Heth had not been ordered to engage, he started firing at Buford and his men. The weird part is that John Buford was at Camp Floyd too!!!! Then, the next Union man to roll into town was General John Reynolds--ANOTHER Camp Floyd alum! It was like a Camp Floyd reunion at Gettysburg, only they were trying to kill each other. Unfortunately John Reynolds got shot in the neck shortly after he arrived in Gettysburg, but I think it's pretty crazy that three of the first to engage at G-burg had all been stationed out in the Utah Territory before the war.

Another famous Camp Floyd soldier was Bernard Bee from South Carolina. He is the one who gave "Stonewall" Jackson his nickname! In fact, Sarah and Joel have visited his grave in South Carolina before--and we didn't even know that he had been out in Utah for a few years! Who needs Mark Twain stopping by when you have Generals Johnston, Buford, Heth, and Bee?

Reconsidering Sterling Price

If Confederate General Sterling Price were made into a South Park character, this is what he would look like :-) You can make your own South Park character by going to: http://www.sp-studio.de/. It's kind of fun.

I have been doing some additional research on General Price for an article I'm going to send to BYU Studies. I had originally thought that he was just plain mean to the Mormons in Missouri in 1838 (he was the leader of the guards that Joseph Smith rebuked at the Richmond jail), but some new findings indicate that he may have actually tried to reconcile things between the Mormons and the Missouri citizens. He claimed that he had misunderstood the Mormon situation before he was given charge of the prisoners in Richmond and attended the subsequent court hearing. Hmmmm, I don't know what to think now. Joseph Smith did list "Colonel Sterling Price" as one of the Missouri persecutors in his 1839 redress petitions, and Parley P. Pratt talked about the grievances that Colonel Price allowed to be heaped upon the Mormon prisoners. Sterling Price is a definite historical enigma.

One interesting thing I found the other day was that at the battle of Lexington, Missouri in 1861, Sterling Price (commanding a Confederate Missouri regiment) encountered Robert Smith (commanding a Union Illinois regiment). Robert Smith had been the leader of the Carthage Greys back in 1844! So former Mormon persecutors were pitted against each other during the Civil War. Very interesting.

Addendum

This picture is too funny! Lindy posted it on her blog and I had to post it on mine because it is so perfect :-) Poor Riles had kind of a rough miniature golfing evening, but I'm sure we'll all look back on it with fond memories. Camden and Riley are too cute! And Lindy was so nice to get the ball that I hit into the stickery weeds right next to the freeway.

Good Golfing Times

Nate, Lindy, Camden, Riley, and I had such a fun time miniature golfing last night!!! The girls were especially excited about their pink golf clubs.

Riley had a bit of a meltdown by the time we got to hole #2, but golfing was so much fun that her meltdowns wouldn't last very long :-)









Camden and Riley both developed the very smart technique of getting the ball where you want it to go by walking up and placing it there with your hands--much easier than with the long, awkward clubs!







Everybody was especially happy by the time we got to Cinderella's castle. They were a little sad that you couldn't actually go inside the castle yourself, but it was fun to send the ball in there. Lindy and Nate are excellent miniature golfers, as are Camden and Riley--it must be in those Barrett jeans. I was the only one who hit a ball off the course and into the bushes, but other than that once I did pretty good :-) It was great to have a relaxing evening with some of my favorite people in the whole world!


Today I worked at Camp Floyd all day, and it was a bit tiring because it was history camp and it was 100 degrees outside!

Speaking of Camp Floyd, here is a picture of the infamous 1858 potatoes. Nasty to the max! If you see potatoes like that at the store (or anywhere else), DO NOT eat them.

Where the Deer and the Antelope Play

Ah ha! Dad identified the mutant deer for me! It turns out that they are not mutant deer after all--they are antelope. I should have known that but I didn't even think of antelope. They're cute little guys. Dad solved the mutant deer mystery!

Today was an interesting day at work. As I have mentioned before, my latest assignment is to create some wayside exhibit signs to be placed in front of Stagecoach Inn and the old Fairfield schoolhouse. So today I gave my drafts of the signs to Mark, but he had mixed feelings about them. He said he liked them, but he was acting kind of strange. He was questioning all of my dates and some of the information I put on the signs. For example, on the school sign it said that the state of Utah acquired the building in 1977. He said, "I'm almost positive that it wasn't until 1987." So I had to pull out the newspaper article from 1977 entitled "Utah Accepts Gift of Fairfield Schoolhouse." Then, on one of the photos of the inn, I had the date listed as 1961 and he said, "That photo is actually from 1964--I'm almost sure of it." So, I had to dig through the photos to find it, and written on the photo was "August 1961." It was weird--it was like he didn't trust anything I had written! The weirdest part was when he questioned what I had written about the Fairfield school closing in 1939. I had several references to said closing date--including newspaper articles, etc. He said, "I have always understood that it closed in 1937." I asked him where he got that date, and he pulled out an old binder that had a survey in it that said the school closed in "circa 1937" (circa meaning "sometime in the neighborhood of"). And it didn't have a reference for where 1937 came from. Hmmmm, it seemed pretty darn clear to me that 1939 was the correct date, but he still made me spend the afternoon looking for other sources to back up my findings.

Later in the afternoon he said, "Are you absolutely positive that Mark Twain never wrote about the inn?" I said, "Yes, Mark. I have read through everything he wrote about his trip through here, and he did not mention it."

Speaking of the inn, I had titled the sign: "Stagecoach Inn ~ Carson House" because these days it is known as Stagecoach Inn, but back in the day it was called the Carson House, Carson Inn, Carson's Hotel, and the John Carson House. Of course it wasn't called Stagecoach Inn back then because that would be like calling a hotel today "Car Hotel"--and that's a lame name. As Mark was reading through my text, he said, "Why do you keep calling it Carson's Inn when we need to be consistent and just call it Stagecoach Inn?" I said, "I referred to it as Carson's Inn because that's what they called it in all of the historical writings." He gave me kind of a blank stare, then he said, "Then when did they start calling it Stagecoach Inn?" I said, "I don't know; probably when the state acquired it." Then he was all distraught because he wanted to be historically accurate and call it Carson's Inn, but he thought people would be confused if it was referred to by different names. He was quite upset and was wondering if we would need to change the official name of the park from Camp Floyd/Stagecoach Inn State Park to Camp Floyd/Carson Inn State Park. (But that would cost the state a lot of money to do, so that would be a bad idea.)

Anyway, he seemed kind of mad that I had discovered that the inn wasn't always called "Stagecoach Inn." Basically, what Mark wanted me to tell him all along was, "Hey Mark! I found a page from Mark Twain's journal where he says: 'Tonight we stopped at Stagecoach Inn in Fairfield, Utah Territory, and I enjoyed one of the most pleasant evenings of my life.'" But said page does not exist--and that's not my fault! I was very confused today because Mark is more than happy to go along with the legend that Mark Twain stayed at the inn--which has no historical proof, but then when I was presenting him with the facts today, he demanded proof of everything I had said and seemed upset when I could prove the validity of my facts.

So, in the end, he made me go clean the bathrooms :-( That was nasty.