Sunday, October 25, 2015

Grandma Lottie

Mom and I had a fun day, yesterday. Mom discovered some information on Familysearch.org. One of the things she found was that my great-great-grandmother was buried in Provo. We had never been to her grave so we decided to take an adventure to find it.
Of course, it was Saturday so the office was closed. We only knew a general area that she was buried. Mom said when she was little her grandma told her that she was buried "over there". Provo cemetery is huge!
We did a lot of walking and eventually I decided to see what I could find online. Success! I found the location. We were looking in the wrong area. Eventually, we found it. It was so exciting after all that looking!

Not only did we find her headstone but we also found her husband, who was next to her, and her in-laws who had the biggest headstone I could see in the cemetery!
According to a story I found on familysearch.org Henry Davis Sr. was a horse trainer and very well known. Maybe that's how they got such a huge headstone. I don't think you can tell how big it is from the picture but it is probably a foot or more taller than me!
Mom and I were discussing why Lottie always seems to be a big part of our family history and why we always think of her. I told her I thought it was because we take pride in our Irish history and she's the only one that we know of her story.
Lottie was actually Charlotte but she always went by Lottie. We think that the headstone doesn't have her full name because she never went by her full name and it was probably cheaper to engrave less letters.
She came to America from Ireland when she was 18. She traveled by herself on a ship for 6 weeks before reaching New York City. She lived with her cousin who was married to a Presbyterian Minister. They moved from NY to Florida and then to Utah. Lottie was working for a family in Payson when she met her husband, Henry. According to the story it was love at first sight and they were married within a month. (Guess quick relationships run in the family!) I also found out that they had 11 children but 3 of them died as babies. My great grandmother was the youngest.

Henry and Lottie Davis

 
I'm so grateful that we have access to this kind of information and grateful for the people who have worked hard to not only keep up on genealogy but also post things like the story I read and other pictures.  To think, we have been so close to my great-great grandparents and my great-great-great grandparents and never even knew it!
I can't wait to see what else I can discover and see what kind of adventures I can go on next!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Thansk for the adventure. I really enjoyed the time we spent together. can't wait to see what we find next time. Love you, Mom