Thursday, December 11, 2008

John Daniel Sr.

I finally heard back from Salt Lake County Archives.

"I have received your request for a death record for John Daniel Holladay, Sr. I checked our death record index covering the years 1848-1883 and was not able to find a listing for a Holladay. You might want to try the Utah State Archives and see if they have one. Their website address is http://historyresearch.utah.gov I did a name search for him on their website and his name did come up, but didn’t have any documents attached to it so you may have to call them at 801-533-3535. Do you know exactly where Spring Creek was? Could it have been in Utah County? If you can figure out where that was, then that might help as well."

I checked the state archives, and they had a listing for John Daniel (1798-1862) buried in Santaquin County. But when I pulled up the cemetery's burial list, it was the wrong John Daniel (1828-1909).

SO. Since Salt Lake County has no record of him, and he's not listed as being buried anywhere in utah State, my conclusion is that he is buried (unmarked) in Holladay Memorial Park. And unless we get a bolt of lighting-revelation telling us that "Spring Creek" does not refer to the stream in Holladay, Utah, I am pretty sure that's what we'll have to stick to.

Friday, December 5, 2008

PAF 5 tutorial & Holladay, Utah

To anyone interested:

Stacy has created a tutorial (complete with pictures) on how to get started creating and adding basic information to a new PAF file. It is posted on the Resources and References page! Go check it out and then get started! As always, drop us an e-mail (gordonworthholladay@gmail) if you want our most recent PAF file.

And now, some real big news! Introducing Holladay, Utah! Rebecca Lynne discovered this city through a friend of hers who will be student teaching there shortly. If you click the link, you will see that it was founded by members of the Mississippi Company, who were led by none other than our John Daniel Sr.!

The even more exciting news: thanks to Google Earth, Becca found that there is a "Holiday Cemetery." After a little cross-referencing back and forth between the city's website and our records, I now believe that John Daniel may be buried there. My records say he is buried in "Spring Creek, Utah" and the city's website says the original founders named a stream near Kentucky Avenue "Spring Creek." Here's a photo of the entrance on [no kidding] Memory Lane:



Guess what? As an extra treat, we found a virtual tour of the cemetery. We couldn't get close enough to many of the graves, and so far have not determined if he's for sure in there... but we're pretty certain. Anyway, enjoy your tour by clicking on that link, then clicking on "virtual tour."


Don't forget to keep researching!!

EDIT: After quite a few phone calls it has come down to this: Holladay Memorial Park has early pioneer grave sites, but they are unmarked and the cemetery doesn't know who is there. The employee there gave me two other cemeteries to check out, but one number didn't work and the other was established several years after John Daniel's death. So now we are in the process of submitting a research request to the Salt Lake County Recorders' Office.

But it's all still good news!!!

=]