Donald G. Godfrey - In Their Footsteps

Published by the Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, in cooperation with Deseret Book Company, Salt Lake City.

Visit us at rsc.byu.edu.

2018 by Brigham Young University. All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America by Sheridan Books, Inc.

DESERET BOOK is a registered trademark of Deseret Book Company.

Visit us at DeseretBook.com.

Any uses of this material beyond those allowed by the exemptions in US copyright law, such as section 107, Fair Use, and section 108, Library Copying, require the written permission of the publisher, Religious Studies Center, 185 HGB, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah 84602. The views expressed herein are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the position of Brigham Young University or the Religious Studies Center.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Godfrey, Donald G.

Title: In their footsteps : Mormon pioneers of faith / Donald G. Godfrey.

Description: Provo, Utah : Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young

University, in cooperation with Deseret Book Company, 2018. | Includes

bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017033988

Subjects: LCSH: Mormon pioneers--Canada--History. | Mormon pioneers--United

States--History. | Mormons--Canada--History. | Mormons--United

States--History.

Classification: LCC BX8611 .G64 2018 | DDC 289.3092/2 [B] --dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017033988

Dedicated to

My wife, Christina Maria Godfrey;
my children; and my grandchildren

Also the families of
Kenneth, Arlene, Marilyn, Lorin,
and Robert Godfrey

The heritage of the past
is the seed that brings forth
the harvest of the future.

Wendell Phillips (181194)

I n Their Footsteps is the story of pioneers across four generations who lived in many communities and countries. These men and women lived from the early 1800s into the 1980s. They lived in Bristol and Liverpool, England; Nauvoo, Illinois; North Ogden and Logan, Utah; and Cardston, Alberta, Canada. This story reflects the foundations of the Mormon presence in Canada and LDS life in the small communities that spread their influence across the nations.

Authors today often write only about leadership and celebrity, but even in ordinary lives extraordinary things begin to happen.

When public history began, there was a significant distinction between amateur and professional historians. The prevailing wisdom was that amateurs reworked people and local history while professionals were more concerned with national and world history.

People are the foundation of history and community life. They offer inspiration and commanding motivations. The biographies of Church leaders provide some history, but unfortunately most histories of the common Latter-day Saints are anthologies of sorts; they are self-published collections of stories and photos, mixed with genealogical sheets. Their audience is limited. Yet they could be significant public histories if brought together, telling of the times, societies, and families of historical eras. Each family creates history one individual, one family, and one community at a time. These are the seeds from which public history and personal heritage grow. They are a magnifying glass through which we can acquire a personal glimpse of history. In Their Footsteps is one such history. It is the story of pioneering men and women from the Joseph Godfrey and Charles Ora Card families. The framework of this history began more than two hundred years ago in Charles Dickenss England and leads into twenty-first-century America. Ancestors from Victorian England migrated to the New England colonies, moved on to Nauvoo, scattered into the Great Salt Lake Basin, and moved northward into Canada. This work tells the story of the men and women woven together by circumstance, with love for each other, a familiar faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and a determination to hold to the iron rod no matter how many turns their lives took. They crossed the Atlantic, rode wagons, and walked barefoot across the plains to Zion. Lives were lost. Families suffered the results of angry mobs. They knew the prophetsJoseph Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylorand contemporary Apostles N. Eldon Tanner and Hugh B. Brown. They endured the terrors of persecution. They hid in the Mormon Underground. They grew and flourished in the regions of the Salt Lake, Weber, and Cache Valleys in Utah; Star Valley, Wyoming; and the prairies of Alberta, Canada. They were the first settlers into southern Alberta. They were faithful Latter-day Saints contributing to their communities and their Church in common and uncommon ways.

In Their Footsteps draws on a rich collection of personal papers. These men and women saw the value in keeping journals, diaries, notebooks, handwritten autobiographies, reminiscences, photographs, and oral histories. The diaries of Charles Ora Card, from 1871 to 1903, and his letter copybooks portray life in Cache Valley and Canada at periods critical in history. The journals of Floyd and Clarice Godfrey detail the experiences of the first LDS couple missionaries in Taiwan, the Republic of China. The letters between Clarice Card, the oldest, and her youngest sister, Melva Card-Witbeck, chronicle decades. The family organization newsletters record family activities over four decades. Oral histories were conducted and preserved by more than a dozen living ancestors.

In addition to personal records, the research for In Their Footsteps utilized the LDS Church History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah; Brigham Young Universitys L. Tom Perry Special Collections in Provo, Utah; the Courthouse Museum and Archives in Cardston, Alberta; the Town of Cardston public records; the Magrath Museum in Magrath, Alberta; the Galt Museum in Lethbridge, Alberta; the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta; the North Ogden Museum in Ogden, Utah; and the Utah State Archives in Ogden, Utah. Documentation from these archives provided detailed collaboration and contextualization.

The work is carefully framed within the time periods. National and local sources provide this framing, which is interwoven throughout the manuscript in narrative, at the head of each part of the manuscript and within extensively annotated footnoting. The primary national scholars include multiple texts from Leonard Arrington; F. Ross Peterson, A History of Cache Valley ; Kenneth W. Godfrey, Logan Utah ; Joel E. Ricks, ed., The History of a Valley ; and Richard C. Roberts and Richard W. Sadler, A History of Weber County . Conway B. Sonne, Ships, Saints, and Mariners provided information on Atlantic Ocean crossing. Lowry Nelsons The Mormon Village provided public historystyled patterns of early settlement techniques. Works of Canadian scholars such as Brigham Y. Card, The Mormon Presence in Canada ; Hugh A. Dempsey, Red Crow: Warrior Chief ; A. A. Den Ottor, Civilizing the West: The Galts and the Development of Western Canada ; and Donald G. Wetherell and Irene R. A. Kmet, Town Life: Main Street and the Evolution of Small Town Alberta, 18001946 all provide Canadian framing to growing southern Alberta communities. Helpful community historical society publications included Magraths Irrigation Builders , vols. 12; Cardston and District , vols. 13; Floyd J. Woodfield, A History of North Ogden: Beginnings to 1985 ; and Jeanette Shaw Greenwell and Laura Chadwick Kump, Our North Ogden Pioneers, 18511900 .