LDS celebrates its historic trip

A gathering at Fred Young Park Saturday was all about community, camaraderie and history.

Saturday was "Pioneer Day" for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints across the country to commemorate the arrival of Brigham Young and the first group of Mormon pioneers at Salt Lake Valley in Utah in 1847. The Plains LDS Church has once again celebrated the day with food, music, lawn games, dancing, and fellowship, but the annual event was for anyone, not just members of the church.

More than 100 people showed up for the event, including many church members, from around 5 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Saturday. Church members set up several tables and chairs near and in the gazebo, where Phyllis Shear and others from the church served dinner - pulled pork, potato salad, coleslaw, pork and beans, watermelon, and cake.

"It's a celebration of our ancestors when they first settled in Utah and the Wasatch Mountains," said LDS church member Wayne Baker, who is serving a Church Service Mission in the Plains area. The festivities included lawn games, music, dancing, and an offer from LDS member Kathy Bowen to help people track their ancestry lineage. "They don't have to be church members and we don't preach when we do it," said Bowen, the church's lead "FamilySearch" consultant.

The 73-year-old Bowen has been helping people search their family history for 50 years. She said it's a free service that the LDS Church provides to the community. She and her husband, Dwight, set up a table at Saturday's event for three hours for anyone who would like to find out more of their heritage. She estimated that only about 50% of the people who have come to her for assistance over the years have been church members. On Saturday, three people from Plains and one from Thompson Falls signed up to utilize the LDS Church library in Plains.

"I think it's fun. I've learned so much about my ancestry," said Bowen, who has done this kind of service at six other churches before moving to Plains in 2014. Bowen has traced her ancestry to the 1600s with family members in France, Great Britain, Wales, and Scotland. One of her relatives, William O. Morris, chased the infamous John Wilkes Booth after he shot Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theater in 1865. What's even more interesting is that Bowen's husband is related to Booth. Bowen said she attended the first play in Ford's Theater when it reopened in the 1960s.

In her ancestral search, she discovered that she's related to Lewis Morris, whose property was used for a staging area for General George Washington in his crossing of the Delaware River in 1776 for a surprise attack on a Hessian force in New Jersey.

Pat Killgore of Plains was one of those who stopped to talk to Bowen about helping him find out more on the McKay part of his family tree. Killgore said he has traced his family to the 1300s to Scotland, but had come to a wall.

Bowen said that it's much easier to track ancestors these days, especially with documents, such as birth, death, burial, and marriage certificates. "If you start out with that you can build from there," said Bowen, who has done genealogy lectures in Washington and Montana. Bowen uses several history websites in her research, including Ancestry.com, perhaps the largest ancestry institution in the country. She said that a person has to pay for most of them and some are expensive. However, it's free with the LDS Church, where Bowen helps a person with their search. Those interested can go to the LDS Church on Helterline Drive on Mondays noon to 4 p.m. and Wednesdays from 2-6 p.m. or by appointment by calling Bowen at 406-826-4580 or her cell at 406-529-1479.

People at the annual celebration had a good time and it was considered a success, said Elders Quorum President Tracy Scott. Shear said the food was prepared the day before by 18 volunteers. She said they had only positive feedback on the meal, most of which was homemade. Baker said the local church has been putting on the event for around 30 years. Shear said they've held the event at the church, the pool park, and while camping, but this was the first time they've done it at Fred Young Park. She said the actual date of the celebration each year is July 24, but the local church holds it on the prior Saturday each year. In Utah, July 24 is an official holiday.

Officials of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are moving away from the term Mormon, a nickname that has been with the church since the early 1800s. Scott, a church member for the last 42 years, said it's been called the Mormon church by those outside the church since its beginning because of the scripture book they use to accompany the Bible called the "Book of Mormon."

"The members accepted the term until just a couple of years ago when our current President Russell M. Nelson stressed to the members to start calling the church by its correct name of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints," said Scott, one of numerous volunteers who helped set up tables and chairs Saturday. When they found out that only one outlet in the gazebo worked, Scott fetched his generator so the DJs, members of the Ryan family, could play music for the dancing.

"It's nice to have time to lay aside all the conflict and animosity and have a chance to have some good camaraderie," said church member Keith Baker, a Gospel doctrine teacher at the Plains branch.