Jace Doxey Baptized Today. Another Angel got its Wings

From the Fortress of Solitude

Pleasant Grove

Hello All,

We've arrived home from attending my great nephew Jace Doxey's baptism at the American Fork Tabernacle.  Yes, little Jace has officially joined the ranks of the believers.  As he rose from the water I thought I heard a swooshing sound.  I believe it was Jace's guardian angel enjoying his new pair of wings, awarded for his part in getting Jace to this point.  It wasn't easy, Jace and his brother Foxton have their good and bad days.  Jace is working on his patience and Foxton, well - he gets a pass on account of his age :) 

Two other children were baptized along with with Jace.  You might as well make it a community event if you're going to fill the baptismal font.   Our family nearly filled the baptismal hall, leaving precious few pews for the other two families.  The service was acceptable in length and survivable by most standards, except for the occasional outburst from one or more of Kim and JD's grandchildren.  Amber gave a good talk on the importance of the Holy Ghost or Spirit (depending on your denomination) in our lives.  

Jace is the 8 year old son of Amber and Brock Doxey.  Amber is eldest daughter of  Kim Williamson and John DelGrosso (see Relationship Chart below). 

A luncheon was held at the DelGrosso home in Highland after the service.  It was a warm afternoon.  The company was good and the many babies entertained everyone.  Annette and her children were there.  Annette will be moving to American Fork next week.    

Congratulations Jace.

Aunt Beverly's Photo Album. Post 2. Spearfish, South Dakota 1972

From the Fortress of Solitude

Pleasant Grove

Hello All,

Today I continue posting the photographs from Beverly Mattson's photo album.  Today's photographs come from the time the John Mattson family lived in Spearfish, South Dakota. 

First, for our distant relatives, the Relationship Chart:

   

Taken inside the Mattson home in Spearfish. May 1972.  Kirk and Gina are in the kitchen

Kirk and Gina Mattson

Kirk and Gina in 1972.  On the right, Uncle John with two friends standing in the Belle Fourche LDS Chapel

Uncle John with friends again and Gina and Kirk in the nice red chair.

Kirk Mattson with cousin Shane Mattson at Reptile Gardens, outside of Rapid City. Shane is the second child of Marvin and Pam Mattson.

Uncle John and Kirk enjoy breakfast together. 

Kirk with Gina and getting a hug from dad.

Kirk on his Delivery Cycle with sunglasses.

Gina

Williamson Line. 14th Great Grandparents. Thomas St Leger and Anne Duchess of Exeter

Our 14th Great Grandparents at Windsor Castle

From the Fortress of Solitude
Pleasant Grove


Hello Williamsons,
Charles and Luella returned from South Dakota yesterday.  They both enjoyed the yearly Williamson Reunion held at Spearfish Park very much.  They told me that the yearly family gathering is growing smaller as the years move along and the older cousins pass away.  It may eventually come to an end unless the event attracts younger members of the extended Williamson clan.  


I haven't attended since the big reunion a few years back.  I like to think I have a good reason.  July is my busiest space camp month at the Space Education Center.  Perhaps I can rearranged the camps to give me some time to attend next year.  It would be good to see everyone again and collect a few more family stories for the blog.   


All things British are in vogue at the moment with the London Olympics, so why not publish more information on our British Williamson ancestors?  


Today in our family digitial reunion I'd like to introduce you to our 14th Great Grandparents Thomas St Leger and his wife Anne, Duchess of Exeter.


We begin with the Relationship Chart:

Thomas St Leger (1419 - 1483) and Anne, Duchess of Exeter (1439 - 1476)

are your 14th great grandparents

Anne St Leger (1466 - 1526)

Daughter of Thomas

Margaret Manners (1505 - 1559)

Daughter of Anne

Giles Strangeways (1518 - 1545)

Son of Margaret

Sir John Strangeways (1548 - 1593)

Son of Giles

Grace Strangeways (1579 - 1634)

Daughter of Sir John

Edmund Chamberlayne (1611 - 1676)

Son of Grace

Thomas Chamberlayne (1652 - 1719)

Son of Edmund

Rebecca Chamberlayne (1682 - 1757)

Daughter of Thomas

Cuthbert Williamson (1712 - 1786)

Son of Rebecca

Cuthbert Williamson Jr. (1739 - 1811)

Son of Cuthbert

Mathew Williamson (1810 - )

Son of Cuthbert

George Matthew Williamson (1834 - 1928)

Son of Mathew

William Jonathan Williamson (1858 - 1934)

Son of George Matthew

William Jonathan Williamson (1858-1934) married Effie Helen Victor (1867-1944)

to their children

Ima Della, Vinnie, Inez, Lillie Ethel, Josie Elvery, Emmett, Walter, Charles, Maurice

to

Us

Anne, Duchess of Exeter, was the oldest of the children of Richard, Duke of York, and Cecily Neville. She was born on August 10, 1439, at Fotheringhay—the same castle in which her youngest surviving sibling, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, would be born in 1452. In 1446, when she was six, she was married to fifteen-year-old Henry Holland, who would shortly become the second Duke of Exeter. The Duke of York offered a large marriage portion—4,500 marks--probably because Henry VI was childless at the time, putting the young Henry Holland in line for the throne. Only 1,000 marks of the portion were paid. It was a poor investment in any case, for Exeter proved to be solidly Lancastrian. He also seems to have been exceptionally quarrelsome, falling out with his father-in-law and with all manner of people during the 1450’s and serving time in the Tower. Among those with whom he seems not to have gotten on well with was his own wife. The couple had one child, Anne Holland, but evidently lived most of their lives apart.

Exeter was attainted in 1461 and eventually joined Margaret of Anjou in exile abroad. Meanwhile, the Duchess of Exeter was granted the duke’s Holland inheritance for life. For a brief time beginning in 1464, she had the custody of the nine-year-old Harry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, a ward of the crown. Edward IV married Elizabeth Woodville later that year. Probably around Easter 1465, he transferred Harry to the care of his queen, whose youngest sister Harry married. 

The Duchess of Exeter’s young daughter, Anne, had been promised in marriage to George Neville, a nephew of Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick. George at the time had the potential to be a quite wealthy young man, as the Earl of Warwick had no sons and the Neville lands were entailed in the male line. Elizabeth Woodville, however, wanted the heiress Anne for her own eldest son, Thomas Grey. She paid the Duchess of Exeter 4,000 marks to break the contract with the Neville family. This was certainly sharp business practice on the queen’s part, but it was hardly unusual for the times: rich young heirs and heiresses were hot commodities. Certainly Elizabeth could not have made the arrangement without the approval of Edward IV, the Duchess of Exeter’s brother. The Duchess of Exeter was no less keen to look after her own interests than the queen: as part of the marriage arrangements, the Holland inheritance was settled on little Anne, with a remainder interest in the duchess herself and in the heirs of her own body. 

During the Readeption of Henry VI in 1471, the Duke of Exeter moved back into his London house of Coldharbour, which had been granted to the Duchess of Exeter during his exile. Probably the Duchess of Exeter prudently took herself off to one of her other residences during this period.

The Duke of Exeter fought with the Earl of Warwick at Barnet in 1471. There he was badly injured and was left for dead on the battlefield until a servant discovered signs of life in him and took him to a surgeon. He was later smuggled into sanctuary at Westminster Abbey, but Edward IV removed him and imprisoned him in the Tower of London. While her husband was still a prisoner, in 1472, the Duchess of Exeter took the opportunity to have their marriage annulled. Presumably the Church did not recognize allegiance to the house of Lancaster as a basis for an annulment, but the actual grounds are not known.

The duchess soon remarried. Like her brother the king, she married a social inferior—in her case, Thomas St. Leger, a knight who had probably been her lover for some time. As Anne Crawford notes, Edward IV had been showing St. Leger a great deal of favor for many years, including a substantial grant of eight manors in the early 1460’s. He was no gigolo, however; he served Edward IV militarily and administratively for years.

In 1474, the duchess’s child by the Duke of Exeter died, triggering the duchess’s remainder interest in her lands. The following year, Edward IV set off on an expedition to France, which ended in a peace treaty instead of the anticipated military engagement. Anticlimactic for most people, the expedition was fatal to one—the Duke of Exeter. He had been released from the Tower and allowed to join the expedition, presumably so he could prove his loyalty to the king in battle, but on the return journey, he was drowned. Whether his death was accidental or murder is unknown, though rumors of the latter abounded. 

The Duchess of Exeter, meanwhile, had a daughter by Thomas St. Leger in late 1475 or in January 1476. The little girl, named Anne like her mother and her deceased half-sister, soon became motherless, for the duchess died in January 1476, possibly in or soon after childbirth. She was buried in the Chapel of St. George at Windsor.

Following his wife’s death, St. Leger remained on good terms with his brother-in-law the king. He served as Edward IV’s controller of the mint and as master of the king’s harthounds. In 1481, he was granted a license to found a perpetual chantry of two chaplains at the Chapel of St. George, in memory of his wife. He never remarried.

Thomas Grey, the Marquess of Dorset, who had married the Duchess of Exeter’s eldest daughter, Anne Holland, had remarried after the young girl’s death and now had a son of his own, who was contracted to young Anne St. Leger. The arrangement under which Anne was be deemed the heir to the Exeter estates was formalized in an Act of Parliament in January 1483. Richard Grey, Dorset’s younger brother, also benefited from the Act, in which part of the Exeter inheritance, worth about 500 marks, was set aside for him. The loser in this transaction was Ralph, Lord Neville, who was the heir of the Holland family, although since the Duke of Exeter had been attainted, the crown had some justification in treating his inheritance as it liked.

This arrangement fell apart when Richard III took the throne in July 1483. Thomas St. Leger attended the new king’s coronation and was given cloth of silver and velvet for the occasion, but he was soon afterward deprived of his positions of master of harthounds and controller of the mint. His daughter, meanwhile, was ordered to be handed over to the Duke of Buckingham. Perhaps, as Michael Hicks has suggested, Buckingham had the girl in mind as a bride for his own eldest son. This never came to pass either, of course, for both St. Leger and Buckingham ended up in rebellion against the new king.

St. Leger has been criticized for his lack of loyalty to Richard III, but Richard, having removed him from his offices, had given him no reason to remain loyal. Moreover, St. Leger had been unshakably faithful to Edward IV and, like many of the other rebels, was undoubtedly distressed at Edward V having disappeared from sight after having been deprived of his crown.

Unlike many of the rebels, who gave up the fight after Buckingham’s execution on November 2, St. Leger continued the fight in Exeter, but was ultimately captured. He was executed on November 13, 1483, at Exeter Castle, despite the offer of large sums of money on his behalf. St. Leger, described by the Crowland chronicler as a “most noble knight,” was buried with his wife Anne at Windsor. They are depicted here:


One last bit of business remained: the disinheritance of Anne St. Leger. In 1484, Richard III’s only Parliament overturned the acts under which Anne had been declared the heir to the Exeter estates. The beneficiary, however, was not the Exeter heir, Ralph Neville, but the crown itself.

Poorer but still well connected, Anne St. Leger ultimately married Sir George Manners, Lord Ros. Their eldest son, Thomas Manners, became the first Earl of Rutland. It is this earl’s countess who is credited with telling the supposedly sexually naive Anne of Cleves, “Madam, there must be more than this, or it will be long or we have a duke of York, which al this realm most desireth.”

Source: 
 http://susandhigginbotham.blogspot.com/2008/05/anne-duchess-of-exeter-and-her-two.html

Sir Robert Sheffield, Speaker of the House of Commons. 13th Great Grandfather.

From the Fortress of Solitude
Pleasant Grove

Hello All,
In today's post, the life of one of our 13th Great Grandfathers, Sir Robert Sheffield.  Sir Robert was Speaker of the House of Commons during the reign of Henry VII.  

We begin with the Relationship Chart:

Sir Robert Sheffield Speaker House Commons (1462 - 1518)

our 13th great grandfather

Sir Robert Sheffield (1483 - 1532)

Son of Sir Robert

Elisham Sheffield (1530 - 1549)

Son of Sir Robert

Thomas Sheffield (1550 - 1598)

Son of Elisham

Edmund Sheffield (1580 - 1630)

Son of Thomas

Ichabod Sheffield (1630 - 1711)

Son of Edmund

Ichabod Sheffield (1670 - 1736)

Son of Ichabod

Adam Sheffield (1687 - 1764)

Son of Ichabod

John Sheffield Sr. (1727 - 1796)

Son of Adam

Sarah Sheffield (1768 - 1850)

Daughter of John

Levi Dennis (1800 - 1846)

Son of Sarah

John Mayberry Dennis (1844 - 1897)

Son of Levi

Vesta Althea Dennis (1892 - 1978)

Daughter of John Mayberry

Violet Mae Pierce (1918 - 1987)

to

Us

Sir Robert Sheffield (died 1518) was an English lawyer and politician, Speaker of the House of Commons between 1512-1513.

Life

He was son of Sir Robert Sheffield of South Cave, Yorkshire, by Genette, daughter and coheiress of Alexander Lownde of Butterwick, Lincolnshire. He was trained for the law in the Inner Temple, of which he became a Governor in 1511. He served as Recorder of London from 1495 to 1508. He was thus ex officio an MP for City of London in 1495, 1497, and 1504. Bernard Andreas mentions that he resigned the recordership in April 1508.

He was a commander at the Battle of Blackheath in 1497, and was knighted by Henry VII after the fight.

He was chosen knight of the shire for Lincolnshire in 1512 and 1513 and was elected speaker of the House of Commons in 1512.

In 1515 he fell foul of the church over his attempts to limit their privileges and was summoned before the Star Chamber but negotiated a pardon. Six months later he was incarcerated in the Tower of London and brought before the Chamber again and this time asked the king for mercy. However he was to die in the Tower on the 10 August 1518, and was buried in the Augustinian church, London. His will is in Testamenta Vetusta by Nicholas Harris Nicolas (p. 555).

The American Fork Mattsons in the Early 1980's

From the Fortress of Solitude
Pleasant Grove

I came across a few pictures of our American Fork Mattson cousins taken by yours truly in the early 1980's.  I'm thinking 1983 - but I can't be sure.  The years blur as I speed through life making it difficult to anchor events in their correct corresponding years.  I blame the acceleration of time.  I want to move through life in the slow lane, but age keeps moving me right, into faster lanes along life's highway.  I'm told it is a universal phenomenon.   I don't like it.

 Joe Mattson with baby sister Candace around Christmas 1983. 

The Mattsons visiting Temple Square, Christmastime 1983.  Front row left to right, Jake, Camille, Angie and Joe.  Back row left to right, John, Bev, Kirk and Gina.

  Jake, Angie, Joe and Camille with her back to us.

Jake, on the mat, ready to put down another challenger.

Kirk, referring one of Joe's basketball games.  All I remember about this game is the crowd.  "You suck REF!" they constantly shouted.   Kirk grew fond of the harassment and now refs college football games.  He claims to have thick skin.  I think he enjoys the attention.  

 Jake, Joe, Angie and a neighbor in the Mattson driveway.  The snow was perfect for tubing.  You'll notice my old 1972 Buick Skylark parked in the street.  It was a beauty of a car with a white vinyl roof and black carpeting.

 Camille on the tube holding on for dear life.  

Gina in the distance.  The hair gives her away.  There was also the piercing screams.  They don't come through in the picture, but believe me, they were there.

 Poor poor Angie.  Gina's screams should have scared her away from the tube of death but they didn't.
"I want a turn, I want a turn," Angie begged.  Angie got her turn.  We practically had to carry her into the house.  We checked on her very couple hours to make sure she was still breathing.

A final picture for this post.  Camille, Easter 1984.  

 The scanner doesn't like my slides very much when it digitizes them for the computer.

Photos from Aunt Bev's Photo Album. Post 1

From the Fortress of Solitude
Pleasant Grove

Hello All,
Aunt Bev entrusted her large photo album to me at my request during the family's July 4th barbecue.  I'm planning to post all the pictures to this blog so the family, especially the Mattson children, can download them for their own personal histories.

Simply,
Victor

Uncle John must have been under the weather in this photo dated April 1972 at Bev's parent's home in American Fork, Utah.

 According to Bev's notes, these two pictures were taken in California.  The picture to the left shows

Great Grandma Vesta (Violet's mother), Uncle John, Kirk, Aunt Bev holding Gina.

On the right, Jon with Gina with Grandmas Vest and Violet walking arm in arm.

Aunt Bev with Grandma Mattson and Gina.

Kirk and Gina sitting in the Mattson kitchen in Spearfish South Dakota. January 1972.

 Kirk and Gina in the Mattson living room, Spearfish South Dakota

Gina and Kirk with favorite dog Baron. I have fond memories of that Spearfish House. We loved visiting Grandma and Grandpa Mattson.  

John and Bev lived in the house when Grandma and Grandpa moved to California.

More from 1985/86. The Pictures Keep Coming and Coming.... Will They Ever Stop?

From the Fortress of Solitude
Pleasant Grove

Hello All,
The middle of July brings summer's hottest days to our pleasant valley.  The heat, mixed with moist monsoonal air, clouds the late afternoons. Light showers generally follow, cooling and scenting the air.  It is the best part of the day.  It is the best part of our Utah summer.

I continue researching our family's history, spending hours every week searching for long forgotten ancestors.  I want to tell their stories.  I want to know who they were.  My discoveries are posted on this blog for all to enjoy.  Lately you'll notice a decline in the posted research.   No, I'm not growing board with the endeavor, I'm just nearing the end of what's available.  For some of our ancestors, a name on our family tree is all we will ever know of them.  That, and the fact that they continue to live on to some degree in the very essence of who we are.  

The limited information on our ancestors has given me an opportunity over the last several months to post pictures from our recent family history.  These picture are posted so the people in them can download them for their own personal histories.  Today, we continue by looking at pictures labeled 1985/86.


Simply,
Victor

   Joseph Mattson holding his young cousin Autumn DelGrosso

Joseph doing his tricks outside the American Fork Mattson Home.

Brothers Jacob (orange shirt) and Joseph (white shirt) with two friends on their front lawn.

Joseph up to bat

Joseph pitching

Uncle John and Aunt Beverly Mattson out for a horse ride on the occasion of John's birthday

Jacob Mattson -  too impatient to wait for a spoon (Uncle John's birthday)

Kirk Mattson

Joseph caught in the act - his finger getting dangerously close to the frosting on his dad's cake.

The presentation of the Cake (Bev and Kirk)

Another birthday party celebrating Charles Williamson's 1986 birthday at the home of Marvin and Cindy Mattson, Black Hawk, South Dakota. 

Charles Williamson at his birthday party.  

Grandma Mattson could never get cool enough on a hot June South Dakota evening

Cindy Mattson holding daughter Hallie with Luella Williamson

Uncle Ray (Linda's husband), Uncle Marvin and Charles Williamson

Luke Mattson, eldest child of Marvin and Cindy Mattson

Uncle Marvin with Hallie