Your mom and I got the chance to meet the kindest woman at the temple Teddy Sue, neighbor and friend of Randy and Penny's family. She was a delight to visit and brightened everywhere she went. During our conversation she asked if we had seen the Stucki home in Santa Clara. We had not, so she encouraged us to go see it and told us it was near the Jacob Hamblin home.
So on our way out of St George, we drove through Santa Clara hoping for the chance to see these homes. Sure enough, after a little driving, we found the Jacob Hamblin home, and it was open so we went inside and listened to the presentation by Sister Thompson, a senior missionary from Texas. It was a delight. Unfortunately, we didn't have instructions on how to get to the Stucki home, so we decided to save that for a next trip.
On the way home I had two thoughts:
- How difficult it was for our ancestors to make the journey we completed in just 3.5 hours. Handcart pioneers traveled between 14-20 miles per day. If they had rivers to cross or difficult terrain or weather to deal with, it was even fewer (like 3 miles or less). As we were driving at 80 mph in air conditioned comfort, listening to music, and snacking on blueberry cheesecake, I mentioned how differently we have things now. The same journey could have taken our ancestors around three weeks and considerable discomfort and risk. How blessed we are today.
- Thinking that maybe I could find something about the Stucki home on the Internet, I did some searching when we got home:
John Stucki home in Santa Clara Utah (home images)
Great Grandpa John wrote in his journal about the call to go to Dixie and settle there. After mentioning that upon arrival, there was discussion about having them stay in either Washington or where St George is now. But they wanted to go see the Santa Clara Valley, as they had heard it had many different types of timber and brush growing there. He wrote the following:
The valley, being thickly covered with willows, cottonwoods, black willows, and other large brush, made us think that it must be rich soil as well as where there were clear fields, so the company decided to stay there, and the Santa Clara town was laid out. (p51 Family History Journal of John S. Stucki)
I thought how familiar it sounds like our journey to Castle Valley and what we found there. Goes to show how much we can learn from our ancestors' experiences and familiar words repeated in our day can shed life and light on everything we do.
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