(Cedar Fort Home a number of years later)
At age nineteen, Sidney Glenn Hardman left Cedar Fort, the remote Utah town of his youth. He found work, and his eternal companion, Dorothy Mae Griffin. Forty years later after many good years of marriage, six children, eighteen grandchildren, several startup companies and numerous trials and blessings, Glenn and Dorothy had moved back. Dorothy wrote, “Why were we directed to live in Cedar Fort? What is the Lord’s purpose for us here?” Years before during the many visits they had made while raising their children Dorothy recalled saying, “I would never live in Cedar Fort.” They were concerned by the influence on their children of “an element of [church] inactivity” and lower standards.
Later, with the children now on their own, Glenn’s most recent company closed its doors. They felt the burden of a lingering mortgage, as well as the load of caring for both of their aging widowed fathers and felt “grateful that each one of ‘them’ had their home paid for.” Without an income they were scared, but “felt at ease, almost in a patience mode, and we talked and pondered…wondering about the calmness we felt.” One day Dorothy asked herself what she really wanted. “All of a sudden, the light went on, and I [knew that my desire was to] have a home that was paid for as we entered our ‘later years’.” Further pondering brought Cedar Fort to mind as an option. “No, it didn’t even shock me, and I thought, why not?”
Glenn was surprised but didn’t hesitate. “It seemed so right.” Being people of action, the wheels turned quickly. They found a lot with a foundation and partial house and purchased it, sold their home in Orem, moved into a trailer on the lot on Labor Day, began construction, “and the future was coming into view.” They were in by Christmas.
“We had determined,” Dorothy recorded, “that we would not come to Cedar Fort to try to tell the good people here what to do. Rather, we would quietly wait and serve when called, and we would make friends and help wherever needed… Glenn had come ‘home’ and his old friends and family welcomed us. We…decided to look for the good, to be positive…”
In addition to church callings and community service, Dorothy continue to care for her aging father which required the cost of regular trips to Ogden, money that they didn’t have. “I wondered how we managed to come up with that much…” She learned from her diseased mother to pray “for the little things.” Dorothy learned to love and appreciate her difficult aging father through the care she provided. Glenn also received callings and served in the community including as Mayor, while once again re-building a little company in a barn. This provided jobs for family and friends. When called by the bishop to be the Young Men’s President, he said, “At my age? I don’t have the patience any more…” After Dorothy was prompted to review his patriarchal blessing, Glenn went to work as as he had many times before directed by the Lord. His blessing read, “Take an interest in the leadership of young people…through your fine spirit and enthusiasm, you will be a great power in bringing them to live lives of righteousness…” And so, God’s purpose in prompting them back to Cedar Fort became more clear, to have a home that was paid for, and to serve and improve the lives they were concerned about many years before.
(#AncestorClips – Written by Kenneth R. Hardman. Reference: Sidney Glenn Hardman & Dorothy Mae Griffin, Their Story and Their Life, Volume IV, 1985-2007, edited by Kenneth R. Hardman 2024, pg. 46-50)
“Mother gave an Indian a whack with an iron poker for stealing her biscuits hot from the oven, and a papoose a whipping for shooting her ducks with a bow and arrow. The mother of the papoose went mumbling around their camp saying that Mother had wronged her papoose. So Mother went to Washakie, the Chief, and Washakie gave the squaw and papoose ‘heck’… 
The fog settled over the immigrant ship American Congress off the shores of Newfoundland. The sun did not shine, nor provide navigational reference for the crew. James Keep and his wife Ann, three daughters, and one grand-baby were sailing for Zion with 350 Saints. While on deck, James looked forward for a time, then aft, reflecting on the hopeful journey yet ahead, and then on his life back in England. He was five years old when his father died, was raised a few more years by family members, but mostly, with little schooling, made his own way keeping sheep, cows, horses, or any work he could find. The heavy fog bore down a second day on the ship. James thought back on his apprenticeship as a brick layer and his nine years with his first wife Elizabeth. Sometime after her death, James married Ann Miller, and he began to seek religion. He attended the Wesleyan’s, and later the Baptist’s, and then the Independent’s, each for a number of years, but still felt alone. “I could never tell what the Kingdom of God was,” he wrote. The thick fog prevailed a third day; their location and direction, unknown. James recalled the two young men who brought the restored gospel to his home. Encouraged by his wife, he listened. “I never knew what God was until I came into this church.” He and his family were baptized and accepted callings. He traveled extensively to preach the gospel for twenty years. Now at age 60, on a ship in the Atlantic, Johns faith in God’s promises held strong. “Captain,” a man yelled, “what is that?” The man on the quarter deck pointed anxiously forward. The fog [had] lifted from the surface of the sea, as if a veil or scroll had been raised. The tall powerful captain looked, then sprang to the wheelhouse like a tiger, knocked the helmsman down, grabbed the wheel, and with full presence of mind and moment, turned it about. Sailors sprang to their posts at his commands, as the ship swayed and turned avoiding rocks, breakers, and a watery grave. Many thanks were given to God for lifting the fog, and protecting the saints.
Glenn performed his military duties and was absolutely determined to be an example and a Christian. He never served as a formal missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but he took every opportunity to act like one. “There is a fellow in the company that is a member of the church, but not very active. He has promised me that he will go to church, but as yet, he hasn’t. He got quite drunk and started to lose his money, so what does old dad do? I stepped in. He was gambling, so I took his money and his wallet away from him, and… finally got him in bed, but he wouldn’t stay there, so we took him down and put him in the ice-cold shower. Believe me, that really straightened him out in a hurry. I hate to get mixed up with anything like that, but we do have to take care of our brothers, don’t we?” While in the service, he held a number of things close to his heart including letters from home, church magazines, a portrait of Dorothy, and a little photo of his parents and sister. To his wife back home he spoke of blessings on Earth and in Heaven, “If we only live our religion as we have been taught, we shall have these things and also reach eternal life…It will really be a wonderful day when we can both stand together and thank our Father in Heaven for all His blessings.” This is who they were and who they are. This is who I want to be.
Glenn Hardman and Dorothy Griffin; did they become good independent of outside factors? Certainly, not. Did any of this goodness come from their parents and ancestry? Certainly, yes. Dorothy spoke of her childhood. “I am truly grateful that my parents were always active and that they taught us by their example that church was the place we were to go, that activity in the church would bring joy and satisfaction to our lives. Though I have no memory of a burning testimony in those days, I know the seeds were planted then for my love of the church as I have grown older.” Similarly, Dorothy wrote of Glenn, “He went to Primary and learned about courage and being pure in heart, to be a cheerful helper to his father and mother every day, to say thank you, to obey, to be courteous at home, school and Primary, to pray and to appreciate the beautiful world.” As Glenn and Dorothy continued to grow in their youth, they made choices that brought them in contact with additional sources of help and divine instruction. While a young adult, Dorothy received an assignment she thought miraculous that gave her opportunity to serve in new ways, making her realize the source of her talents, and how she could use them for much good. “I began to see,” she wrote, “what the patriarch had meant when he told me I had talents that would manifest themselves in the positions of responsibility which I would have…” Glenn demonstrated his integrity when on his own in California, surrounded by a world of opportunities for good and bad. In a letter to his parents back home, some trusted friends wrote, “He never misses a day without coming in and reporting in. He is only going with church boys and girls and taking in the church activities. Dorothy Griffin, the girl he takes most, is a swell Mormon girl.” I can see how my life was and is influenced by their lives… I can see their influence in my life, in the lives of all their children, and their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren.
As the smoke of the industrial revolution continuously settled on residents of Manchester England, in 1834, death persistently came to rest on the small home of Margaret and Richard Hardman. Likely with broken heart wondering if she would ever have children, she laid her fifth lifeless baby to rest in an early tiny grave. Margaret was a weaver, Richard was a rope-maker, but another 9 hopeful months passed with no daughters for mom to dress, and no sons to enter dad’s trade. With prayer, work, endurance, and love, another 10 years passed and 6 more pregnancies. Three would die, but three lived on; Alice Eliza, Lehi Nephi, and George Richard. Alice received the middle name of her grandmother, Elizabeth; George bore the middle name of his father, Richard; and Lehi Nephi carried the names given him by a prophet a year before he was born. Poor health restored under Priesthood hands by the Gospel of the Restoration, Margaret and Richard carried on, gathered with the Latter-day Saints, moved from their home with many of their family, ever onward, following the prophets from Manchester to Nauvoo. Living only blocks from the Nauvoo temple, they built Nauvoo, the Temple, and their posterity. After their eternal marriage and sealing in the Temple of God, Margaret lost Richard, missing on the Mississippi while working and escorting family members to Zion. Widowed, cast out through trails of sorrow, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, and the loss of her second husband William Presley to cholera, she pressed onward, eventually to a place where her children including Jane Amanda Presley met their companions, raised righteous families, and gave Margaret posterity beyond all that she could have imagined. We too, can press onward, ever onward. #AncestorClips
Halvor Halvorsen was a ship captain sailing in and out of the fjords, up and down the beautiful Norway western seaboard. [His wife and children lived in the north in Namsos] As his family grew [to 8 children], he longed to be with them, acquired a telegraph station in northern Norway, where he could work on land, and have his family with him, but he took seriously ill in the north, and died. Before his death, in a touching letter to his family he wrote his memories about his parents and siblings, and then these heart felt words to his children.
AncestorClips 