Monday, August 23, 2010

An Answer to a Prayer

This blog advertised itself as being about both the Keillors and the Smiths, so in order avoid issues of false advertising, here's a story about the Keillor line.
When you take an unusual, easy to misspell name and join it with a ridiculously common name you have a recipe for a mess. Howard's father's mother's mother was Maria Wressell. I've seen it spelled Wressel, Wressle, Russell - the variations are endless. Her brother married a woman whose last name was Brown. Because of the two issues, I had made a real hash of the memorials on findagrave and my PAF files. It became a shadow hanging over me and the few fixes I could think of didn't work out, so I did the only other thing I could - I prayed for help!The odd part is that I can't remember the details of finding Jim on findagrave, but within the hour, I found that he had posted the correct entries for the couple - the answer for which I had prayed! Additionally, he sent me a good deal of information that helped fill in some holes and fix some other errors.
This is George Cavil Wressell, Jr. 1864 - 1938.

This incident brings to mind one of my favorite gospel quotes of all time: "God does notice us, and he watches over us. But it is usually through another person that he meets our needs. Therefore, it is vital that we serve each other in the kingdom." (LDS President Spencer W. Kimball)George married Eunice Lorena Brown, 1865 - 1906. They are both interred (and recorded correctly, by my new friend Jim) in Lakeview Cemetery, Harbor Springs, Emmett county, Michigan.

2 comments:

  1. How did you find "Jim?"

    This is WAAAAY cool!!! One of your Wressell/Browns must've been waiting for this!

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  2. I found him through findagrave!!!! (made the edit in the post) He has since transferred the memorials to me and I'm going to get them all linked and filled in.

    And yes, I have a handful of family Bible pages on the Browns - related only by marriage, but got the strongest impression Sunday that she bought the Bible and so carefully filled in all the family pages back in 1859 just so they could be found in 2010. I've had the pages for a couple of years, but for some reason didn't do anything with them then. Hmmm...

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