Sunday, November 24, 2013

Isaac Bowers

My cousin, a genealogy buff on our Bowers side, posted a pic of an Isaac Bowers who lived in Orderville- another United Order community. (Our King side lived in Kingston which was a successful United Order community. Ended only because the rest of the church could not live the law of Consecration.)
I could never located an Isaac in our direct line, but came across a brief bio that named his parents as Maria Lay and James Bowers both born in 1811. Aha. p.764
https://dcms.lds.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE102301
He is the nephew of our direct line John Bowers born in 1816.
I have no idea if John also lived in Orderville.
I will have to look into his biography.
I did come across some old tapes made by the church in the 70's on church history that gave a very arresting picture of Orderville. (Along with some other issues that I would never see them cover in such a way today-such as ERA, etc.)
Those tapes made me wonder about our Bowers connection to that community.
Turns out my 4th great-grandparents Lewis Mecham Sr and his wife Lydia Knight Mecham nee Wells are both buried in our local cemetery here in Provo. I didn't know Lewis served a mission with his brother Moses to 2 native tribes. (I attend a native ward.) [Seems on Great-grandfather Parley King's line there were many relatives who worked with indigenous people. Such as Culbert King who served with the Kanosh, and William King who served in Hawai'i and then escorted Hawaiians to Iosepa in Tooele where he later served as the 2nd mission president for a year before he passed away of an untimely infection.]
You can read more about Culbert in this awesome link I found.  https://dcms.lds.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE102301]
His wife is interesting to me. She was born in Iroquois territory in a town that later practiced a communal utopian lifestyle. I think she was long gone by then, but I read the hsitory and it said that town was against slavery long before the Civil War, was a place where people helped with the Underground Railroad, and had Quakers (makes sense) and atheists.
They suffered the persecution of the early Saints being pushed around from place to place but were sealed in the Nauvoo Temple December 30, 1945. :) They had 14 children.

This is where the Mechams are buried in Provo. You can search for Provo City Cemetery relatives here.
His mother is buried out in Heber!
I am going to pay them a visit and then in the spring go visit the grave of my 5th great-greandmother, Parmelia.