Episode 132: Fountain Green and the Mormons

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:21)
Well, we just finished up Scandinavian mission History. So slowly back away from the Samaritan's Booth, let's do some work.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:28)
Let's get back to my people for a minute. Can we finally? We've set up the indigenous history of the area, we've set up the missionary and theological history of the area, we've talked about the war and the conflict to get here. Can we finally talk about my people?

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:44)
Short answer, no. Long answer, no, with a no.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:48)
The hell we won't. I'd like to thank my sweet LDS mother, sister Deborah Weas Hansen, for helping untangle my fountain green family tree. So we're going to start off this episode with my pioneer bonafides. Such a weird word to say. Hopefully we can get Bryan to do his family history too. Are you planning on it, Bryan?

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:06)
If I have to, I have to.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (1:08)
Well, as for me and my house, we've got many ties to the fountain green in Sanpete County through my dad's grandparents, both from his mother and father too. So we're going to talk about my dad's history today. And as Bryan and I dig into our family history at the time period a little bit, this time it's my dad's side. Dad's grandpa came from Alborg, Denmark with his family and moved to Fountain Green. And the story goes that although he was dirt poor and living in a wood cabin, he was very generous with what he had. He would get a box of cigars and take them down to the auto shop and pass them around.

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:41)
Sounds like a den of sin to me.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (1:44)
Auto shop? Where does an auto shop come in? Early 1900s? Okay. His wife, Mary Ann, was a transplant to Fountain Green. Her mother, Harriet Quinn, was in the Martin Handcart Company. And once they were rescued, she and her sisters became cooks for Reddick Allred, one of the rescuers.

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:59)
Oh, interesting. You go on Good Morning America, you take out ads and all the trade papers about how you're going to finally talk about your ancestors. And then instead, you talk about my wife's ancestors.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (2:11)
What? Are we family? We're kin?

**Bryan Buchanan** (2:14)
Super original. That's almost as good as when Brigham Young named the Norwegian settlement Norway.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (2:18)
Hey, I make no apologies. I've asked you to do your family history, not your wife's family history, but it just keeps creeping in. That is what I call divine intervention. And let's be honest, this happens a lot. Like Sanjeev Bhattacharya said, our family trees tend to look more like wreaths. So join the wreath, Bryan. Pay attention because you're going to all hear Reddick's name again. After several children, Harriet Quinn passed away and her kids were farmed out to those who could take in an extra one. Marianne was taken in by Catherine Oldroyd in Fountain Green, and Marianne loved her like a mother. And her experiences were captured in the 1897 Juvenile Instructors article entitled, A Wonderful Answer to Prayer, which my family is very proud of.

**Bryan Buchanan** (3:00)
So from what I gather, your dad's matriarchal line has all kinds of ties to Fountain Green as well. So his second great-grandma, Rebecca, went from being a ladies' maid in Copenhagen to losing all her crops to grasshoppers in Utah and living in an adobe house where they hosted Orson Hyde.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (3:16)
That's very peak Utah.

**Bryan Buchanan** (3:18)
So family Laura says he wasn't a very fun guest because he would ask everyone if they wanted to hear about the baby resurrection and then he would start crying when they said no.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (3:27)
Only Burgum Young thinks that that joke is funny.

**Bryan Buchanan** (3:29)
That's our usual batting average. So Rebecca and her husband were called to settle the San Pete Valley with a group of Scandinavian saints. They went first to Glenwood, but after an attack led by Chief Blackhawk where all their livestock was stolen and the blacksmith got shot through the chest and face, they fled to Ephraim. Their daughter Emma married Wiley Payne Allred Jr. and lived in Fountain Green. There's that Allred name again. Their son James Peter married Elizabeth Crowther and lived in Fountain Green. The Crowthers of Fountain Green. Somebody had to write a book about that.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (4:02)
They already did. You have a copy of Benchmark. It's Aggressively Dry and Boring. How dare you? I love that book. I pulled from that book. It's a family book, damn it. I'm so proud of that thing. You think it's dry and boring? It is, if you're not a defendant.