Friday, August 22, 2008--Bryce and William

Today's first big adventure was going to Bryce Canyon National Park. Even though Kathy had commented earlier to Chris that one rock was beginning to look like every other rock, it is not strictly true. Bryce Canyon appeals to the whimsical side of us all and is definitely worth seeing.

The two main places we went in the Park were Inspiration Point and Natural Bridge. We could not go elsewhere because they were doing controlled burning in some of the park that day.

Inspiration Point is the truly whimsical site. After climbing to the observation area (huff and puff, huff and puff-kdr), visitors look down into what could be a fairyland of towers. Or they could be the remnants of ancient castles and monuments to kings and queens and remind viewers of something out of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

Natural Bridge has been photographed many times and really isn't a natural bridge. It's actually an arch. The difference (Kathy's un-scientific explanation) is that one is formed by water erosion and the other by wind and other forms of erosion. Either way it is an impressive natural wonder.

We then left the national park circuit briefly and spent the rest of the day appealing to Kathy's sense of fun. Before leaving on the vacation, she ran off details of anyone in her genealogy database that had done anything in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, or Arizona (just in case our route matched the data).

Sure enough, one gentleman that was supposedly the brother of Henry Jones (Ben, Jason, Kyle, and Megan's paternal great great great grandfather) and his several wives were supposed to be buried in either Paragonah (Pair-a-goo'-nah) or Parowan (Pair'-a-wahn), Utah, and those towns were easy to reach from Bryce National Park. So, it was on to the cemeteries to look for William E. Jones and any of his clan!

We first arrived at the small town of Paragonah's cemetery. Luckily, they have a directory and map of the burials there. We easily found the Jones listings and one appeared to be one of Williams' wives (Kathy's record said "Sarah Davies" and the cemetery listed "Sarah Davis Jones".) We found and photographed the stones for Joneses in about four different lots. They seemed that they might also be related. One neat thing is that many families in that cemetery use the back of the stones to list the children of a couple!

On to Parowan, which is a larger community. Even though it was Friday night, the library stays open until 9 PM! Those blog readers who work or have worked in libraries (probably most of our readers!) can appreciate how rare that is. We both started going through the books on the history of the area, especially those recommended by the librarian.

The history of the area basically becomes the Mormon history of the area in most of the works we saw. It was discovered that William E. Jones served as the LDS bishop for Paragonah for quite a few years in the 1800's. And some of the wives listed in Kathy's files (which came from LDS Ancestral Files submissions) were actually plural wives! It seems that he was even one of the leaders that was jailed during that turbulent time.

Well, to make the story end soon, it now appears that William E. is NOT an uncle. The biographical data we found listed about him gives another set of parents. So there is definitely some confusion to sort out here. Of course, he could be some kind of cousin, but those of us that have lived around Lebo, Kansas, realize that Joneses are a dime a dozen when we are talking about the Welsh!

We did go out to the cemetery and, even though there was no directory, we walked the older parts and Chris discovered William's stone. We did photograph it. Even if all these folks are not our kin, we will load the pictures onto Find a Grave if they are not already there.

Headed south on Interstate 15 and spent the night in a KOA in Cedar City. It was time to do laundry, so we were up late doing that. Plans for the next day include going to Zion National Park and then heading for Arizona. Our next possible destination after that is now Canyon de Chelly National Monument in the middle of the Navajo Nation Indian Reservation.