We Take The Long Way Home.

(Land of Napoleon - part 3)

Instead of driving back home through Logan, we decided that we wanted to take a short trip over the mountains just west of Preston so we could drive though the little town of Portage, Utah, where some of our ancestors settled in 1867.

It took us about 45 minutes and we ended up on 1-15 about 20 miles north of the Utah/Idaho boarder.

A stretch of road we have traveled many times before.

However, we HAD NEVER KNOWN that this is where the John family settled after joining the church in England, nor where Mary Jane John Hawkley met and married into the Hawkley family. We knew nothing of this until I recently found several histories of our family at the Daughters of The Utah Pioneers Museum in Salt Lake.

Yes. I wanted to see Portage.

I wanted to know if Johnstown was still there. What we learned was that Portage use to be Johnstown, but when Lorenzo Snow visited this area years and years ago, it reminded him so much of his birth place in Mantua, Portage, Ohio, that he requested they change the name to Portage. They did what the Prophet asked and the name was changed.


I just wanted to drive through and see the town. Kenneth wanted to find relatives. He is much braver than I am.

So he knocked on some doors and we were eventually sent to the house with the green roof (Yep. That's how small Portage is).

We met Denton John. A long lost relative. A second cousin three times removed.

He was so nice, and while we got there late on a Saturday evening and he didn't have much time right then, he made us promise we would return sometime in October after the harvest is over.

He took us downstairs and showed us pictures of Thomas and Margaret John! The very people we had been reading about in the car on our Napoleon trip! Wow!

We took pictures of the pictures.

Thomas John

Margaret Thomas John

It's a bit confusing. Margaret Thomas married Thomas John. :)

The woman in the picture above - Margaret - carried her 9 year old, very ill daughter, over many miles of the plains.

The 9 year old daughter - Mary Jane - is my great, great, great grandmother.  

Thank you great, great, great, great grandmother Margaret for your many, many sacrifices. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

We are and will forever be eternally grateful.

We saw the 12 mile canal - 12 MILES! - that Thomas John and his sons dug by hand so they could water their crops.

And to top it all off, Caroline actually got to hold the violin that Thomas John brought over from Wales.

It is the only thing the John family had besides the clothes on their backs - literally - when they entered the Salt Lake Valley. Their other belongings had been burned  in a baggage car on the train from New York to Nebraska by a man who hated the Mormons. Luckily, Thomas John had taken his violin with him in the passenger car to play during their trip. He carried it the rest of the way as they walked to Zion to be with the Saints.

A very special experience for a young lady who loves her viola and her family.

We can hardly wait to go back and have him show us more!