Austin recently discovered that an ancestor of his was a native Vermonter. Harriet Silver Dunn was born in 1818 in Bloomfield, Vermont, a tiny town in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont right on the Canadian border. As a teenager, Harriet moved to Lowell, MA to work in the mills, where she met some Mormon missionaries, converted, moved west and became a pioneer, much to the disappointment of her Vermont family.
She married Simeon Adams Dunn at Winter Quarters, a wedding performed by Brigham Young. She adopted his four kids, had a few more of her own, and adopted several orphans before dying in childbirth at age 40. She used her Vermont farmgirl skills to sew buffalo-hide shoes for the kids as they walked to Utah, and sold handmade brooms and cane bottom chairs once they got there. And she ran the farm as a single mom when her husband was on a mission. In all, quite a woman to claim in the family tree.
When Howard and Jordan visited in late May, the three Gray men made a pilgrimage to Bloomfield to find the Silver family graves in the Methodist cemetery. It took some looking, but they finally found the headstones of Harriet's parents Arad and Sophia Silver, knocked over and cracked but still legible (for now). It's awesome to feel this connection to our new adopted home state.
After the cemetery trip, the guys celebrated with a weekend in Quebec City. They stayed at the Hilton, enjoyed the concierge level, watched the NBA Eastern Conference finals in the hotel room, and reportedly went out at least once or twice for some sightseeing and French pastries.
