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The
Face Beyond the Veil
by G.G.
Vandagriff
I
prayed to know my great-grandmother better.
Several years
ago when I was under contract to write my genealogy book, Voices
In Your Blood, a desire consumed me to learn more about my
third great-grandmother, Vira Ann French. I was using my "pursuit"
of her as a case study in how to research and build a family history.
I had all the "data." I knew her dates and places, her parents,
and her many brothers and sisters. But I wanted more. I wanted to
know her, not for my book, but because I felt drawn to her in a
way I couldn't account for. In a bold move, I got down on my knees
one night and prayed that I might become familiar in an intimate
way with this woman. I wanted to know what she looked like, what
her personality was, what her feelings were about following her
husband to seven frontier settlements. I have never said a prayer
quite like that. It was very specific and full of perfect faith,
even though I knew what I was praying for was a miracle.
The next
morning I received a telephone call. As soon as I realized who was
calling, I sat down hard. On the line was a heretofore unknown third
cousin once removed, also a descendant of Vira Ann. Joyce had obtained
my name and telephone number in a way involving equal parts of ingenuity
and coincidence and wanted to know if I knew Vira Ann's genealogy.
I said that I had quite a bit of it and then asked her how much
she knew about Vira Ann herself. She was the favorite granddaughter
of the favorite granddaughter of Vira Ann and had her pictures,
her quilts, and story upon story about the woman! The core of Joyce's
self-worth was built upon this heritage and it was woven deeply
into the fabric of her life. When I wondered how we could meet and
share these things, it happened that she lived within a hundred
miles of my home!
The next
day we met by design at a restaurant in a neighboring city. Within
36 hours of my prayer, I sat looking at Vira Ann's face as it
peered back at me from an old photograph. She was old, but to
my eyes delicate and refined. I could tell from the picture that
she had struggled through the years with her harsh environment
to maintain what must have been a remarkable beauty. Joyce confirmed
that she had always dressed in satin, even on the frontier, and
had never let the sun touch her face, even when crossing the plains.
A deep love for my ancestor grew inside me as Joyce related stories
of how she made that crossing without her husband on three separate
occasions driving multiple ox-teams as she journeyed between her
homes in Colorado and Illinois. "She was a reins-grabber," Joyce
told me. "If things didn't happen, she made them happen."
I could relate.
I have been a "reins-grabber" since birth. And now I couldn't
help but feel that because of this quality we shared added to
the combination of our faith and desires to know one another,
we had been brought "face-to-face" through this cousin of mine.
In the months that followed, I listened to many wonderful stories
of Vira Ann's life further illustrating her intrepid nature. Joyce
gave me a quilt square my ancestor had stitched with her own hands,
as well as a pair of walnuts which had grown on a tree at the
old Colorado homestead.
I had known
that my ancestor was one of fifteen children born on the New York
frontier and that in her adolescence the family had migrated to
Michigan. What I didn't know was that during that mid-winter migration,
Annis, Vira Ann's mother, had died. The ground was too frozen
for digging and so Vira Ann and her brothers and sisters had to
watch as their mother was buried in the inky waters of Lake Erie
as they made the crossing to Michigan. This grim ceremony haunted
Vira Ann all her life.
She was given
little time to mourn, however, for she and Permelia, her older
sister had to take immediate charge of Amanda, age eighteen months,
as well as Louvisa and Sophia, their youngest sisters. What a
bleak, unconsolable time that must have been, traveling across
the vast expanse of water, shrouded in freezing fog, pursued by
Arctic winds and warm memories of a life that would never be again.
Now what might have proved to be an exciting adventure was turned
into a horrible nightmare.
This frontier
venture was only the first of many she would make in her life.
Her husband, Jonas Barber, only stayed in one place long enough
to see it civilized, then moved on. My mind quailed when I realized
that after losing her beloved sister Permelia in childbirth just
eighteen days after her own wedding in Michigan, she had soon
become pregnant herself and Jonas had resolved on leaving Kalamazoo.
Why did Vira Ann choose to go with him, instead of staying behind
with her family and joining him later? Surely after Permelia's
death, she felt at risk! This battle between her need for security,
her sense of duty, and her desire for adventure would be a constant
in her life. Sometimes security won, but this time duty and adventure
seemed to lie together. Heavily pregnant, Vira Ann went west to
Iowa where, in the roughest of cabins along the Mississippi, attended
by who knows whom, she gave birth to her first son, Charles Edwin
Barber. She had given birth and survived. As I came to find out,
she was the quintessential survivor. She died of old age in her
nineties, outliving her husband and one of her sons, after having
helped her husband tame the wilderness of four frontier communities.
She ended her days in Fruita, Colorado.
The high-point
of my "through the veil" relationship with this remarkable woman,
however, was a manifestation at the Dallas Temple telling me that
she had not only accepted her ordinances, but had done so with
much excitement. This was fitting. Vira Ann had grabbed the reins
again!
Now this
"voice in my blood" is a very real one to me. I find myself measuring
my character against hers, hoping that when the day comes that
we meet, that I will be worthy of this extraordinary heritage
and even more extraordinary relationship. What is eternal about
Vira Ann and my other ancestors speaks to that which is eternal
in me. The message is love and hope. With that I am warmed, embraced,
and empowered to go on.
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