Don't believe everything you read.

It turns out the blog world does intersect with reality. Occasionally.

Y'see, last Pioneer Day I posted about my ancestors, and my great-great Grandpa Hezekiah Thatcher in particular. I told a little about his life of heroism and rebellion as an early convert to the Mormon church, driven west for his faith and then further west for his crankiness. I got a good response from my readers, particularly on the running-off-to-California-against-orders bit. We Thatchers have always sorta prided ourselves on that rebellious streak; we like to be faithful to our creed, but not TOO faithful. You hear the word "maverick" a lot when you sit in a gaggle of reminiscing Thatchers -- you could call it our family myth. We've always assumed that this telling of the Hezekiah Thatcher story was true because 1) we knew that Brigham Young had specifically forbidden his followers to go to the Gold Rush or into mining in general and 2) we assumed that our ancestor must have fallen in the rebellion camp, because otherwise we'd have a family legend explaining his purer motives. Usually family traditions tend to put a positive spin on reality, rather than the opposite. So a negative family tradition is probably true, right?

Then a few months after writing that Pioneer Day blog entry, I was reading about Mormons and the Gold Rush and learned that it was now known that Brigham Young, after telling the general membership of the Church NOT to go to the Gold Rush, took aside a few individual members and asked them to do the opposite: go make as much money as possible in the Gold Rush and bring it back to build up the Mormon communities in the Great Basin.

Oh no, I thought.

I wasn't all that upset to discover that I might have fed my faithful blog readers falsehoods about my family. I was upset to discover that I might come from OBEDIENT stock.

Oh NO.

And not just obedient stock -- super-duper obedient stock. I didn't tell anyone in my family: I feared being stoned for the crime of entertaining heretical historical thoughts. I briefly considered heading up to USU to dig through the Thatcher family papers collection, but when it came right down to it...

I didn't want to know.

Then a few weeks back I'm contacted by a stranger who came upon my Pioneer Day posting from a Google search. He's filming a genealogy show for BYU-TV about great-great Grandpa Thatcher and guess what? It's about this very question. Was Hezekiah Thatcher a rebel or the goodiest of do-gooders?

It would appear that the universe is determined to enlighten me on this point.

They want me to be part of the show: a descendant of Hezekiah to add human interest to their investigation (I'm imagining that History Detectives show, but for the Mormon crowd). So I need everyone to pray for me. Pray like you've never prayed. Pray that at least one of the following will happen:

1) They find nothing new and we Thatchers continue on in blissful crankiness

2) They find an entry in his journal that says, "President Young told me to stick around, and I told him where to stick it"

3) They find out he was acting under orders on the Gold Rush thing but at the same time discover that he was selling national secrets to the Commies (or something equally fabulous but non-anachronistic)

4) They find out that he was nothing but good and obedient and I somehow manage not to burst into tears on camera and/or get banned from all future family reunions

Wishing you and yours safety from the tides of inconvenient history. Over and out.