Stories That Live In Us

Utah: Walking Where They Walked (with Michelle Ercanbrack) | Episode 74

• Crista Cowan | The Barefoot Genealogist • Season 2 • Episode 74

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When Michelle Ercanbrack volunteered for a Mormon pioneer trek, she thought she'd be helping teenagers learn history. What she discovered instead was a missing piece of her own family story that had been hiding in plain sight for decades.

Michelle, a BYU family history program graduate and former Ancestry researcher who worked on television shows like "Who Do You Think You Are," joins me to share how sometimes the most meaningful genealogical discoveries happen not behind a computer screen, but when you physically stand where your ancestors once stood. Her emotional experience retracing her ancestor’s journey through the Wyoming wilderness to Utah reveals why knowing the facts of a story and truly understanding its impact are two completely different things.

Her ancestor, Mary Ann Malley, was a widowed single mother facing impossible choices and learning more about her life led Michelle to understand that even professional genealogists can overlook the most meaningful connections in their own family trees. Her story challenges every family historian to ask a simple but powerful question: What happens when you stop researching your ancestors’ lives and start walking where they walked?

This episode will leave you questioning whether you truly know your family's stories or if you're ready to discover what you've been missing.

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🖼️ Ready to turn your family discoveries into a beautiful conversation piece? Visit FamilyChartmasters.com to create a family tree chart that will help your family share stories for generations.

♥ Want more family history tips and inspiration? Follow me @CristaCowan on Instagram where I share behind-the-scenes looks at my own family discoveries and practical ways to uncover yours!

Michelle Ercanbrack:

But standing in the places. We skipped that Again, like I was so happy to help other people stand in the place and at no point was I like, hmm, maybe I should stand in the place Like I didn't do it. And that's crazy to me because I'm the professional genealogist that wrote these stories for other people and it never occurred to me to do it myself.

Crista Cowan:

Stories that Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present and future. I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist. Counting down to the upcoming celebration of America's 250th birthday, you'll meet families from each state whose stories are woven into the very fabric of America, tales of immigration, migration, courage and community that remind us that when we tell our stories, we strengthen the bonds that connect us. So join me for season two as we discover, from sea to shining sea, the stories that live in us. My four grandparents all practiced different faiths. My grandfather was Lutheran, my grandmother was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. On my mom's side, my grandfather was evangelical and my grandmother was Southern Baptist. So I grew up with a lot of different faith traditions and if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you know that a lot of my guests have had different stories of different faith traditions as well. I just find that such a fascinating part of family history and family stories that oftentimes it's the religious tradition that causes the migration or leads to the different beliefs and values that a family holds. Well, today, our state that we are highlighting is Utah, and, of course, utah is deeply connected to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Of my four grandparents, that one that was LDS. I have deep pioneer roots in this state and so I've grown up hearing the stories of the pioneers. I've also learned a lot about the Mormon Trail. The Mormon Trail was the road west for most of those early pioneers as they left Illinois, crossed Iowa, crossed Wyoming, came into Utah to settle here, iowa crossed Wyoming, came into Utah to settle here. What you may not know is that that trail opened up a lot of the West for many of you who may have family members from this part of the country as well.

Crista Cowan:

My guest today is Michelle Erkenbrack, and Michelle has deep pioneer roots on all four branches of her family tree. Now I know Michelle. She is a dear, dear friend of mine. I met her because of our work here at Ancestry. Michelle was originally contracted by Ancestry years ago to be part of the research for the television program who Do you Think you Are, and then eventually the company hired her and brought her on and she worked on a lot of the different television productions.

Crista Cowan:

She is a brilliant storyteller, and so I think you're going to enjoy her story about how some of her family got to the valleys of Utah, but also just the connection between her and I, because we're such good friends and because we share this particular heritage in common. It's a particularly tender episode for me. So enjoy my conversation and my tears with my friend, michelle Erkenbrach. Well, I'm really glad you're here and excited to have this conversation with you. You know how much I love you and how much you have played a role in my family history journey, even here at Ancestry. So what I want to hear because I don't know if I've ever heard the whole story is how you got into family history you know it's interesting.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

I don't when I think about how I got started. I usually don't connect back to my dad, but I actually think that's where it started. Um, I, my first name is Jean. I'm named after my great grandmother when, when they were trying to decide what to name me, my mom wanted to name me Kira and my dad wanted to name me Jean. They're kind of on opposite ends of the spectrum. They landed somewhere in the middle with Jean Michelle, but I'm named after my great-grandmother in honor of her. My dad just loved her.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

She and her mother were prolific family historians. They were early members of the Utah Genealogy Association. My grandmother inherited a lot of that, and she and my aunt, I mean, they went to every cemetery, they wrote biographies of every ancestor. And so my dad, he kind of took the technical approach to it. So my dad was an early Apple bro. I think we've owned probably every iteration of an apple computer that they've ever created and I man, I have a lot of early memories of just being perched somewhere near him with whatever he was doing, and a lot of times he was in working on pedigrees. So I think, think that between knowing the history of my name and connecting back to someone like that, asking my dad questions and kind of watching him. There were certain stories that we'd hear, but it was, I think, very superficial right. It was all just kind of something that happened in the background or just incidental. Just kind of something that happened in the background or just incidental.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

It was when I transferred to BYU that I felt like there was something there that I needed to find and I didn't know what that meant. I mean, you know, first time moving away from home, I'm just trying to get my footing, and there was a family history class that I kind of signed up for on a whim and on the first day the professor said you know and for those of you that are interested, we have a family history major and it was like a light bulb. Again, it's strange, because there wasn't anything really leading up to that. I had no idea what family history really honestly was. But she said those words and I was like that's what I'm going to do and I did. And there were many times in that program where I was like I have made a huge mistake, this is going to make a living out of this. I mean, I got that question a lot and I was always like, whatever, I wasn't worried about it because I felt like that was where I needed to go and it was the right balance of really challenging and very interesting and engaging.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

It's practical history, right? Um? It's the history of everyday, ordinary people, and helping to bring those stories to life is so much fun, um, and so I was absolutely, as part of being in that program, an ancestry user and a fan, and so it was at um graduation in April of 2010 that I had a professor approach me and she said ancestry is hiring and I think you should apply. And I remember looking at the job description and being like that does not describe me, but I appreciate the vote of confidence. But because she had sought me out and specifically said I think you should do this, I did and I got hired in less than a week.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

It was crazy and for a recent graduate in 2010, it was during the Great Recession it felt extremely fortuitous. So I feel like it's interesting because I'm in a different season of my life now. It's interesting because I'm in a different season of my life now but, at the same time, like knowing people's stories and connecting with people in that way is something that I have so grown to love and appreciate, especially in the 10 years since you've been away from ancestry, you've probably learned how that knowing people's stories can affect any area of life, in any occupation, certainly in motherhood.

Crista Cowan:

So you had a road to become a mom and now you have two darling little girls and what role does that storytelling or that passing on of those traditions, like how much of that is intentional in the family you've created versus how much it's just organic like it was for you growing up?

Michelle Ercanbrack:

Kids are a lot smarter than we give them credit for, and I think that, being a mom of young kids, it's easy to just get caught up in the day-to-day like. I have a pedigree on my wall that's right by our dining room table and it's been cold as so. It's interesting the way that we talk about it is we talk about our angels, and it's in part because we've had a lot of like my for my, their grandpa, they had an uncle, they had two cousins that have all died, some who died before they were born and some who died after, who they knew. It's so important that we talk about them often and in happy ways and in remembering them. And so, as we've talked about these different people or we've talked about like, my daughter's name is Evangeline and there's Eva's in both my and my husband's tree, and so when those questions come up or when we talk about where her name came from, we go over to the dining room table and we point out these are your people and these are their names, and so I think right now it's, I guess, isn't necessarily more than that, it's more organic and kind of focusing on names, but now that my oldest is seven, I'm realizing that there's probably a greater opportunity there for me to draw her in, opportunity there for me to draw her in.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

And, um, just this last week, um, my, my last.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

I lost my last grandparent in December and, um, everyone knows, as the family historian, that you don't throw anything away until I've had a chance to look at it right. And so, as we were helping my aunt, um, clean out my grandmother's house, they were setting specific boxes aside for me and they're like this is a lot and I'm like I know so, um, my youngest sister is 18 and I we just flew her out and she spent several weeks helping me go through everything and scan everything, but now my house is covered in boxes and evie has lots of questions, as far as you know, who are all these people and wanting to hear the stories. And it's been interesting because, again, I know the importance of passing on stories and not only do I want to pass on my ancestor's story, but I'm also realizing that I have a story that I want to pass on too, and it's like and how do you even go about starting that? I guess it's just again.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

In my time at Ancestry, I knew how important it was to tell those stories. I knew that as individuals, we need both past and present to help inform our future. And now I'm sitting in the seat where I had the chance to do that in a really meaningful way for a little kid and um I.

Crista Cowan:

I am humbled by it you always make me cry, so as as besties we.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

When have we ever sat down and not just cried? He's crying. I'm trying to hold it together. It.

Crista Cowan:

No, I just was thinking about, like Evie and her curiosity, because that's kind of the world that I was born into, where I was surrounded by family history boxes and pedigree charts on walls and photographs. But some people just don't have that natural curiosity and some children don't, at least as it relates to family history, and so I'm also thinking about that. You had that experience with your sister and I know the maternal way you've looked at your younger sisters because they're so much younger than you, and what a great opportunity for her, at 18 years old, even to be engaged in helping you with that.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

And did she show any curiosity through that with that, and did she show any curiosity through that? It's interesting because you know so, those albums of photos back when I mean there were certain things that I was like I want to hold on to this Albertson's photo envelope where my grandmother had written her name and address to drop film, to get pictures back two weeks later, like we just don't have that anymore. It's this instant like, retake it, let me see it. You know, like there's no anticipation, it's just a totally different process. So even just explaining to her what these envelopes were was hilarious. Um, but the, and then we were physically printing pictures and putting them in albums, right, and so you can kind of see at what point that died off, because it does, right, you get digital cameras and then the photo albums disappear.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

But everything before that, as one of the oldest grandchildren, was all these volumes of my grandparents as young grandparents which, um, my younger sister has never seen, and so so for her she's like I really only knew Papa as someone who was very sick with Parkinson's and so many different diseases, and that he was a veteran in the Korean War because he always wore the hat right. But outside of that, I mean, there's he. I think that's the thing too, when you lose someone and you're looking through those albums, you and you know them, you know their story, like you see the eras of their life and, um, that is something that's actually brought a lot of comfort to me. Um, it's easy to get, um, at least it's like a working mom with little kids to feel like you're never doing anything right. And, um, looking at my grandma's pictures, it just showed me that I mean, she did so many things.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

Like she spent 10 years at Southwest and then like that, and she loved that time. That was one season for her. And like I spent 10 years at Ancestry and that transformed so many things for me. But truly, like, personally, so much growth came from my time in Ancestry and that's that'll be. Like my Southwest. That's one season, but there were so many things that she did after her kids grew up. There was so much more life to live. There's so many things that she did as a grandparent, as a retired person. Life did not stop for her and there's so much hope in that that I'm like I can carve out as many seasons as I want. And I'm like I can carve out as many seasons as I want, and again it's just been, I've been so grateful for the grace that has come just in looking at pictures.

Crista Cowan:

You started it. I know it's my fault. Always there's this interesting thing that happens, I think, for us when we're children and teenagers and even as young adults. We look at our parents and our grandparents through this very narrow lens, like it's really about their relationship. To me, that is my mom, that is my grandma, and sometimes we limit who they are as a person.

Crista Cowan:

And I think now that you're on the other side of that, like you are now a mom and wanting your children to know all of you right, and to see you as a whole person who has interests and passions and had a past long before they came along, and that, I think, is fueled often by storytelling.

Crista Cowan:

So we have to be willing to share our stories.

Crista Cowan:

But the stories of our ancestors get so wrapped up in that because a lot of who they were informs who we are now. And so when you think about the stories from your family history, right, you're a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and, if I'm not mistaken, like pioneer ancestry on all lines, every single one, and that is actually kind of unique, right? Like, of my four grandparents. One of them was LDS, and so I have one little branch of family history that connects to pioneer stories, but my other three are not, and so that's always been fascinating to me when I can connect with people who have that in common with me, and so I always loved hearing your stories about your ancestors. But there's a kind of an epic story in your family history and I'm just curious, like for those who aren't members of our faith or haven't been raised with the pioneer history that we've been raised with, if you want to just share a little bit of that story. And then I've got some questions for you.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

Yeah, well, and here's the thing. So I mean, you go back every single, like four my fourth to eighth grade grandparents, every single one. They're all Mormon pioneers and I know that that is unique. I've inherited so much family history and then there's still so much that I missed. Is what's crazy, right? So there is something in the LDS church called Trek, where I think, ultimately, like like any, any group of people who, like you know, over the summer want to send their kids out to out into the wilderness, to get them out of the house over the summer and send them to bible camp or send them to wherever right, or to, like you know, go canoeing, like connect with nature and especially post cell phones it's like get out of wi-fi service, right? I never went to trek as a kid, but as an adult I got asked to be a trek ma and for the uninitiated um, trek is basically a week-long camp um where teenagers from 14 to 18 from different congregations kind of get mixed up into these family groups or trying to help kids meet new people, and then they learn pioneer stories and recreate what's called like a handcart trek, and so for those, like a tiny slice of Utah history, the state of Utah was founded by Mormon refugees. They had tried to establish the church in several states and were kicked out of every single one of them, and so they fled the United States to Mexico, and not just the border where Nebraska was, they went to what is now the state of Utah, so it was hundreds of miles. And then, once they settled in the Salt Lake Valley, they started sending out missionaries, and in those early days they were primarily in Europe. They were also in places like Mexico and Hawaii, but the edict was, if you join the LDS church, to come back and to move to Utah, and so it started this mass immigration into what was then Mexico and then later the Utah territory, and so I have many of those stories in my family tree and it's a part of it's a history lesson, but it's also part of the founding of the church, and so part of what happens is like we do these checks where we recreate these handcart companies.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

Oftentimes these immigrants were very poor. They didn't have the money to sit on a wagon and sell. They figured out an inexpensive way where they could build their own cheap pine box handcarts and pull their belongings in a box behind them and walk to Salt Lake walk to Salt Lake, and so part of the trek script is to tell the story of two handcart companies. There were so many, there were thousands of people that traveled in these handcart companies and it was difficult, but they got to Salt Lake safe. There were two groups in 1856 that hit travel problems at every juncture, from England and then in Iowa and then again in Nebraska, to the point that they left so late in the season and then were hit with horrific early blizzards in October where there were hundreds that died. And so it's a story that we share with our youth as a testament to the sacrifice that people made to come and to build the church, to build their own faith, to give their families the opportunity that they have now to live, to be able to practice their religion and freedom and just the sacrifices of that.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

So they asked my husband and I to go to this trek and help teenagers pull hand carts and learn about the pioneer and help tell those stories. And I had never really worked with teenagers before. If that had been my sole experience I would think that I was bad at it and I didn't like them. That first check was it was tough, um, and then I came home and and was talking to my aunt and she's like, well, you know that we have an ancestor that was in the martin hankart company and you know it wasn't a proud moment that like I'd gone, I'd done the thing, I'd been to the places, I'd told the stories and I had I'm like, no, I didn't, and you'd been a Genie all just for almost a decade. At that point, listen, my disclaimer has always been I'm building trees for everybody else Like, and my great grandma, she did it right, which is not true. And my great-grandma, she did it right, which is not true. But yeah, I was stunned that I had gone and done the thing and been in the place and knew nothing about someone I was connected to, that had been there and had been part of that. So four years later we got asked to go again and so then the opportunity was to learn the story of Mary Ann Nally and her son Thomas.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

Mary Ann was from Preston, lancashire, england. Preston was a boomtown during the Industrial Revolution. It was covered in cotton mills and when you look at the English censuses, that's what everyone's occupations were Right. Um so she was a rover and um so she's, she was, uh, one of six children and um. According to certain um records, she was, I think, the the 13th person they were counting in Preston to join the LDS church after missionaries came, and so I think she was in her late 20s, but before that, what had happened is, and what's common with these families and in this time and this place, was they're all working, they can't afford their own homes, so they live with their parents. But she met someone in the mill named John Riley who was a spinner, and they had a son together and they named him Thomas, kate and Riley. Um that they wasn't really money to buy a house or to, to like, start the family. So they got married five years later, but they're never in a census together, um, they live separately. I don't know if that speaks to economic hardship or maybe some drama, um, maybe a little bit of both, um, but then it was um during that time that that she joined the church and um.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

And then there are stories. There are stories about how um john riley has been hard to track down. Um, if, if my research is correct, um I believe he was irish with a name like john riley. That's not sure, and there were plenty of irish immigrants in preston, um, and he had two older sisters and he died at 35 from tuberculosis, which was common for those who worked in mills um, common for those who worked in mills um, and in the time that they were there, there was um like an uprising of cotton workers in 1842 and preston protesting the working conditions because they were so bad. And you know, you have 35 year old men dying of tuberculosis. So, um, and it says on the death certificate um, mary Mary Riley was present at death and so, whatever the circumstances were around their relationship, she was there when he died.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

And then the following year she decides that she's going to go and Thomas is their only child. Thomas is their only child. And so the story is that John's older sisters kidnapped Thomas the day that they were supposed to board the boat because they wanted him to stay. And so I mean already when I think of Mary. She's single for a long time. She marries late in life, she has one son, but she doesn't have the nuclear family that she had with her own, her own family, um, her husband dies so young, so tragically, and then she's, uh, her family sends her. They're going to I think she was the first to immigrate. They're going to send her to salt lake and her sisters made her address as one of the other stories that will come into play in a minute. So she's tried. At some point she finds Thomas and they get on the boat. But it's like even getting on the boat is a struggle.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

And then Thomas, she's part of this Martin handcart company that hits all of these delays. They're in Florence, nebraska. It's August and they have a months-long journey to make and they're saying it's late. Maybe we should just winter here in Nebraska, like we'll vote, and they all vote to leave. At this point, mary's 39, which is my age, yeah, mary's 39, which is my age. Yeah, mary's 39, which is my oldest, thomas, and thomas is 12.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

And how big is the martin handcart? There are hundreds. I don't know the exact number, but there are hundreds. It's these. So there are two handcart companies one is the willie and one is the martin. The willie goes first and then it's like 10 days later the marten leaves and the willy companies they lose all of their cattle. The marten has cattle but there's not enough greenery that late in the season for them to even eat. So, like the cows are basically worthless, they're trying to go quickly, so they're told to dump all of their blankets because they're pushing everything right, and then, um, they get to wyoming and they're hit with. It's like some of the worst, some of the worst snow storms for october on record and um.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

So again, like as someone who had utah history and who's grown up a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints we are so familiar with these stories, family history experiences for reporters and podcasters to find out about them, to build a family tree, see if we can find some overlap, some commonality, and then send them to the place, walk where they walked, go connect, go live the story right. I'd done it for years. I helped write the formula we talked as a team of, like, yes, these stories have that ability to touch you in such a personal way. And then it's like I'm in Wyoming and I know Mary's name. I know that she's a widow, I know that she's a single mom, I know that she's been alone a lot of her life. She's got a 12 year old boy with her and I'm we're talking about.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

There's all these, these, these, these, these darn rivers. They have to cross them so many times in the snow and it gets to the point where, um, thankfully, someone rides ahead to tell salt lake that these people are dying in this in two feet of snow and they're sending wagon trains to go out and help them. And the first wagon train that gets that meets the willie company. Willie sends them on. They're like there are people behind us, you've got to go to Martin, and so that first wagon company gets to the Martin company. They get them through those last few river crossings, again in 18 inches to two feet of snow. They're losing people left and right and there's this rock face and these willows and they're just trying to. They're like we have to camp out here until the conditions get better, and so they're there for five days and the stories of the doctors that come, I mean there's so much frostbite, there's so much death, they're just trying to keep people alive. So much death, um, they're just trying to keep people alive until the snow stops so they can keep moving.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

And I've been there, I've been to martin's cove and I've it's they have it fenced off because it's basically a cemetery and um, it's, there's a sheer rock face and it's near a river, and so there are these willows that grow and I and it's, I mean it's all very organic, right, so it's rock, and these rocky um stream beaches and these willows which are tall but that don't have the leaf structure to create any kind of wind barrier, no shelter, no, and um, and like and I, and it happened to me like I lived the story. I walked where they walked. I connected with this person like she became real and and I was so floored by the experience which is hilarious because I lived it so many times in exercise or in theory but it was so completely different doing it for myself, and I remember touching the wall and just being overcome with the emotion of what had happened there and that somehow this woman had survived. There's a diary entry of a woman who said that she had a dream and she said in my dream, marianne is brushing my hair and as Marianne's brushing my hair, we see that help is coming. And then the next morning, marianne's brushing my hair, we see the rest, that help is coming. And then the next morning Marianne was brushing her hair and those first wagon trains came in to save them. But it's like I get this glimpse. I don't have a journal from her, but I get a glimpse of the person that she was and she's someone that, on death's door, in a snowstorm, she's brushing someone's hair, someone's hair, and I love that about her.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

Um, so they, they make it to salt lake and um, one of the other stories is about the dress. So, um, her sisters had sewn her this dress. She wasn't wearing it, it was in a box, so she was saving it. And, um, as they are in this, this snowstorm, and they're being told to abandon everything to live, she said if the box stays, I stay okay. And so they were like, okay, fine, take your box. So she, she kept the box with the dress and it made it all the way back. And then there's a picture from a cousin where they had taken I'm assuming, what was left with the dress and it made it all the way back. And then there's a picture from a cousin where they had taken I'm assuming what was left of the dress and repurposed it into, um, a smaller child's dress. But they're whole. It's like a picture from the 60s but they're holding up this dress. But this, this small child's dress, it's kind of in like a darker patterned fabric a hundred years later that, yeah, that was her dress.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

So it's easy to look at this story cumulatively and for it to feel like a story of loss and of loneliness, but the story of her brushing her friend's hair and of fighting to have something to hope for and that dress she's someone who she wanted to have that thing she was, she wanted to have that future and and, and I think to a certain extent she did.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

I mean, thomas had, I think, eight children and so and he lived in Wyoming and and she was in Salt Lake, so they weren't together but, like her, her legacy lives on through him and through his children and, um, I I know that oftentimes the stories that we pass on are the big, recognizable names. Right, those were the ones that I heard, and I'm going to intentionally not drop names, because I think it's so important to find maybe those stories that you hear or that get forgotten and that don't get passed down, because it took me going to track to hear her story and to learn her name and her story of resilience and of surviving hardship and in fighting for things to hope for, that's something that I can identify with. Those are the stories that can help me and those are the stories that I want my girls to know too.

Crista Cowan:

Yeah, yeah, and we need to say their names. There's something so powerful in that standing in the places and saying the names.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

But standing in the places, we skip that Again. I was so happy to help other people stand in the place and at no point was I like, hmm, maybe I should stand in the place. I didn't do it and that's crazy to me because I'm the professional genealysis that wrote these stories for other people and it never occurred to me to do it myself. But it was. It was transcendent, it was transformative, it was so powerful and, like, honestly, I feel like she was there and that was so humbling.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

Because I'm so protective of this story is because I feel like she's listening. I don't feel like it's my story. I feel like I'm lucky to be a part of the story and I'm lucky to be a teller of the story. But, um, I am looking forward to a day when I get to take my girls to go do what I did, because walking where they walked is so important. The New York Times story about the stories that live in us, which I think is similar to the names I've got to get asked, talks about how important it is for kids, especially teenagers, to learn stories of resilience.

Crista Cowan:

Yeah, yeah, she came here in Utah and you've talked about how she spent so much of her life alone, but you also mentioned that her family sent her first. Does that mean?

Michelle Ercanbrack:

that more of them came. They did, and I need to dig into that more, because they were a family of girls and so I need to go. That's the next step. That's the thing too. I'm like I want to tell this story when I know more of it, right, like I'm still learning the story. It's like once I figure out what their married names were, then I'll be able to pin them down and see what their proximity was to her, because, you're right, was she really alone?

Crista Cowan:

Right, yeah Right, because we can learn things from our perspective of the story. But when we continue to learn more about them and their lives, it broadens that perspective, and that's true whether it's for somebody like Marianne or for somebody like your grandma.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

The more you learn, the more it broadens your perspective well, and I'm so excited about um, yeah, I mean because you mentioned earlier like we should build a group for like the whole handcart company, like the woman whose journal entry I just found, like were they still friends? Like I just found her name, and so now again, there's always more to be found and that's I'm like oof, I gotta get back in this yeah, well, that's what I'm here to do is to continue to encourage people in this obsession that is wanting to know their stories.

Crista Cowan:

But it's because their stories inform our stories if we allow them to live through us and if we are intentional about how we tell them, which I love that you're sensitive about that, that you're sensitive about that. But as you think about your girls, um, I love that you're also looking forward to intentional ways to share this story.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

now, you've kind of got that baked in because of trek, I mean you have something to look forward to, right, well and like, but it doesn't. I like I want to do like our own family thing, right, because for me and a lot of my siblings we we haven't done it. Like that seems like more something that I'd want to do with my family, as opposed to like waiting for it to be this other group thing, and if it is, that's fine. But like that's, what I'm thinking is, like you know, as my parents are driving from omaha, like we need to like have them do a detour to go up and visit these places, because this is my mom's story too and I want her to walk in the place I get. Like for us to do that together would be amazing, yeah absolutely.

Crista Cowan:

I love that, and so I guess that answers my next question, which is as you think about people who aren't of our faith, who don't have this rich pioneer historical background, with diaries and journals, maybe not of your ancestor but of other people? This is a story that we have grown up with in our faith tradition. I am not connected at least I didn't think I was to the Martin and Willie Hancock Company in any way, but I grew up hearing that story because it's shared every 24th of July when we honor the pioneers who came into these valleys in Utah and helped settle this place. It's a state holiday, right, yes, right, like Pioneer Day. You know you mentioned that when those two companies were out on the plains and buried in snow and dying, that the people who were already here in Utah sent people to go get them. And I have a great uncle, I'm sorry, who I recently discovered was one of those rescuers, and it's so humbling to know that he left his own wife and children and, at the drop of a hat, loaded up supplies and made the effort to go, put himself in danger to go help rescue those people.

Crista Cowan:

And you hear those stories or you find those stories, and when they're just stories, they're lovely and they're meaningful, but when those stories have a personal connection to you, it changes. It changes the way you view the story. It changes the connection that you feel is what makes the difference. Because I think maybe for some of us at least for me I don't have kids and so those stories aren't going to live through me into my children. But I'm going to make sure that my nephews and my nieces, that my cousins, that they all have the opportunity to hear those stories, that those stories will continue to live on, because I want my stories to live on too. Because I don't have children, I'm so conscious of the fact that there will be nobody.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

There will be so many. I hope so Don't, don't I hope so Don't. It's like you said, even with Marianne, you're like she had sisters and I'm like I had sisters. Like it's so easy to see these stories in isolation. Yours has never been a story of isolation, so I will, just I will challenge that, because you have such beautiful relationships with your family and you, like you, are so ingrained in each other's stories.

Crista Cowan:

Yeah, and that's important, I think, for us to remember about our ancestors too. They did not live their lives in this Right.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

So you did the thing, that thing that we used to do, where we'd bring two people together whose ancestors touched, and then you have the descendants meet. We just did the thing. I'm so amazed, amazed.

Crista Cowan:

I can't believe it and I bet more people would have those experiences if they knew more of the stories. Like you start connecting those dots when you have that information. Without the information you can't ever connect those dots.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

Oh, my gosh, that's astounding. Yeah, it is kind of amazing and truly like. I mean. You mean, you can't understate how important those rescuers were, because they would have all died yeah, they would have all died, and there was a group that they were like, so fearful for their own lives, heading into that storm. They're like they're dead and they turned around. They're like they're dead and they turned around, and so I'm I am humbled to think from that perspective and that we have that connection. That was amazing, that is amazing.

Crista Cowan:

Um, as you think about this story, as you think about marianne and her, as you have more to learn about her and her sisters and what happened to them, you have this really deep connection to Utah. What does this place mean to you?

Michelle Ercanbrack:

A lot. I love Utah. It's a beautiful place. I mean the secret's out right, but it is interesting. I mean secret's out right, um, but it is interesting. I mean I think about. I just know that as I'm looking through censuses, I can google any of those places and I have probably driven adjacent to them. Um, I do feel like I have really strong like emotional ties to this place and um, I mean, and mary ann lived in springville and I love springville, like there's some, and and the thing about springville too is like there are so many like you know that that's the same street that those people built and those are the same trees, um, so again, we, we think about walking where people walked. I mean, you can buy a plane ticket and you can look up an address and it can be that simple.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

I think one of the most powerful examples I've had in doing that um outside of um, visiting martin's cove, was um when my paternal grandmother wasn't doing well she was staying in in a care facility and I would try and break her out of jail as often as I, as my like life would permit, and so I would pick her up and we'd go get Zupa's drive-thru and then get her favorite soup.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

And one day I was like you want to go drive past the house she grew up in, sugar House and all of those beautiful houses are still there, and so we would drive past her childhood house and we'd drive past the house that she lived in for 50 years and, um, we got stories.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

I got stories she dated the boy next year next door, all through high school and and they can't like I mean I can appreciate where she's coming from, I mean like I've never heard this story before and she's like I didn't think to tell you or nobody asked, like that we have to put ourselves in these different situations to come up with the right question, because I would not have asked the question do we have, like this specific pioneer heritage, had I not gone and done this? This track Right. And so I think that it just speaks to the importance of connecting to people and getting out from behind the computer and and and trying to like timelines are so important in identifying those stories and in finding holes to help you. Like I, love a good timeline, but we have to. We have to walk where they walked too. We have to do both.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

Or drive past the house and bring grandma with you or bring an aunt, like I don't have any of my grandparents but I have my aunts and uncles and they're like the keepers of the stories. Now they have stories they don't realize they have and so, like that's that's. The next step is um, as I've been digitizing all of these pictures and we've been pulling pictures out of photo albums and um sorting them through to you know box, who's going to get mailed what? That's only the next step. Like we're going to have a flash drive that's going to go onto a Google Drive and it can't just sit there right, we have to figure out what we're going to do with these stories and with these pictures and the corresponding stories and who's in them, and make sure they get passed on to those, those cousins that are 18, that don't know, because I don't, I guess I just don't want to wait for them to ask yeah, because it took you till you were 39 to make the connection, start getting all these pieces together, seriously, even as a genealogist.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

So, yeah, you're gonna be a blind spot, it can. It can because you think they're like, oh, I know what I'm doing, right, I've done this 100 times. And then, um, like it is about the story and it is about how it connects back to you and and in sharing those stories and in passing them on, maybe maybe there are people that are smarter than I am that already know that, but well, it took me a minute to figure it out.

Crista Cowan:

Well, you're raising girls in the right environments, right, but the family tree on the wall, the picture albums, the doing the work and bringing them along with you, and maybe the visiting of some of the places and it may not all register with them. Now they may find themselves, at 39 years old, going. Why did I never hear this story? And you may get completely frustrated that you've shared it. Or maybe they weren't paying attention the first time, right, which is why we need to keep repeating those stories. And when you drive down the street in Springville every time like I was born in Provo because my parents were going- to.

Crista Cowan:

BYU, but they lived in Springville. So the first home, my first home, is on second and second in Springville, and every time we drove through Springville when I was a kid my parents would point that house out like and so I know where it is because of the repetition of it. Just keep telling the stories, keep sharing the stories. They may not pay attention the first 20 times, but at some point it may become important enough to them to reconnect with that.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

We live in hope.

Crista Cowan:

Always. Michelle, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for sharing your story and Marianne's story, and I'm excited to hear what you learn next about her story.

Michelle Ercanbrack:

Okay, I will keep you posted. Thanks, chris, I love you.

Crista Cowan:

Love you. Studio sponsored by Ancestry.

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Crista Cowan | The Barefoot Genealogist

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