More Caroline Gee McGavin

I received an e-mail from Family Search Support. The response is included.

Please see the response in BOLD below.

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 12:14 AM, <support@familysearch.org> wrote:

Dear Ivin Gee,
Thank you for your reply giving us more information.

Are you now saying that Francis Gates was a femail? ( female) If so we need some proof of that.

Yes Frances Gates was a female. Please see the previous e-mail.

I think that the fact that I outlined the reasons in the previous e-mail should be sufficient.

1. Caroline was married to Robert McGavin at the age of 13. She was still married to Robert at the time of the alleged marriage to the non-existant Frances Gates and living in Idaho at the time of the alleged marriage to the non-existant Frances Gates in Tooele and had 9 children by Robert McGavin after the alleged marriage.

2. All of the dates in this alleged marriage and Frances Gates birth dates are approximations.

3. There are no discoverable records of this marriage.

4. Frances Gates as a male does not appear in any census records or death records from that time.

5. I have e-mailed all of the contributors and none have responded.

6. There are 12 contributors to Frances Gates Records. Four of these have email addresses. Six of the records come from the Ancestral File and one comes from the Pedigree Resource File and four are from Family Search. One of the submitters to Ancestral File was llgee2825381. I am sure that this was my uncle Lynn Lamar Gee who is deceased. E-mail to this address returned the following response.
Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

llg1912@juno.com

Technical details of permanent failure:
Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 550 550 llg1912@juno.com is not a valid user (state 14).

I would expect this because he is deceased.

Looking at the combined records for Caroline Record #8 contains 18 combined records listing both Robert Mc Gavin and Frances Gates as spouses. Record # 25 is from the Ancestral File submitted by my uncle Lynn and has both spouses listed. Records # 32 and 33 both have both spouses listed. Record # 37 has only Frances Gates listed as a spouse and was submitted by Family Search. Record # 42 has only Frances Gates listed as a spouse and was submitted by Family Search and probably ancestral file. Record # 55 was submitted by Deanna Birdzell Record # 58 lists only Frances Gates as the spouse and was contributed by Family Search.

Please confirm what your relationship is to this family.

This is a direct quote from the previous e-mail. I am the great grandson of Erastus Rowe Gee, Caroline Gee McGavin's older brother.

Let me now go through the relationship in detail. Lysander Gee and Maryette Rowe Gates Gee had 9 children. Erastus Rowe Gee was the second child and second son. His son was William Erastus Gee. His son was Ivin Lafayette Gee. His son was me, Ivin Laurence Gee.

Caroline Rowe Gee McGavin was the seventh child of Lysander and Maryette.

This would make her my great grand aunt.

There are two GEDCOM files on the internet listing Caroline Gee McGavin. Only one by Elbert Richard Brower lists a Frances Gates. He gives no sources for the entry and no dates of birth, death or marriage.

It is my contention that Frances Gates as a male does not exist. Someone picked up this name and it was probably picked up by a number of other individuals and perpetuated with out anyone checking the validity of the data.

The sealings of Caroline to Frances were done in Cardston in 1992 and Los Angeles later.

I do not know what more information that you need to correct this error.

Sincerely,

Please reply using your e-mail reply function.

Thank you.
Sincerely,
FamilySearch
support@familysearch.org

--
Laurence Gee, M.D.
263 Edgemont Drive
North Salt Lake, Utah
84054

Websites

I received an e-mail from my cousin Loni. She had a question. It related to an incident in the life of our common ancestor, Salmon Gee. I had written a short history of Salmon Gee. I posted it on a website that I had created a few years ago. Obviously she had not had access to the website. The website is for data and photographs of Lysander Gee and his family. I give you the link below.

https://sites.google.com/site/lysandergeewebsite/

I have three websites on Google, the above Lysander Gee website and one that I maintain for the ward New Family Search class and then one for my wife and I. The latter is one that only sporadically maintain.

I also upload documents to Google Docs. I will, from time to time, give links to these sites in this blog. I also give the links in the Discussion section in New Family Search on various of my ancestors. In the next few years I will try and move all of my family history documents to the web in one of these sites. If you can't find the link you only need to e-mail me.

Relationships to prophets

Some years ago my brother Glendon asked if Salmon Gee joined the church because of the common ancestry between the Gee and Mack families. I carefully researched this and as far as I know there was no knowledge of the relationship. I looked in the Church History Department which was at the time known as the Archives of the Church historians office. I read all the hand-written journal of Zebedee Coltrin, the man that baptized Salmon Gee, looking for clues. I found none.

Recently my brother Martell asked whether Joseph Smith ever knew that he had a common ancestor with Brigham Young or Salmon Gee. In order to get an answer to this question, I asked my neighbor Ron Barney about this. Ron has been retired form the Church History Department and worked on the Joseph Smith papers. He is probably as knowledgeable as any one about the Prophet Joseph Smith. He stated that as far as he knew, Joseph and Brigham were not aware of their relationship.

To illustrate our relationship to the Mack family I wrote a brief explanation some time ago. Here is the link.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxseXNhbmRlcmdlZXdlYnNpdGV8Z3g6MWZkNjA5OTZhNGQ3MTk3Yg&pli=1

Salmon Gee

I was going through some old CDs and cataloging them so that I would know where to find them and what was on the files when I ran across a Power Point Presentation that I had put together about Salmon Gee in 2007. I uploaded it to Google Docs and make it available to those who want to look at it. Here is the link:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jJY7OIxePQqrInLMOahOBEXfWxp-1V6aVw9-TVBkE_U/edit#slide=id.p5

At the top and a little to the right is a button to click on to play the slide show. Since this is not copyrighted, feel free to download and distribute it.

Find a Grave

Apparently I did not properly query the Find a Grave site. There was already someone who beat me to it.

Find A Grave Memorial# 130379

It has his portrait and a link to his second wife Hannah Stringfellow Rawlins. She is buried in the Draper City Cemetery. There are photographs there as well.

Find A Grave Memorial# 9545658

Joseph Sharp Rawlins

Two days ago there was obituary notice in the paper. Don Cromar had died. I knew Don and his family when we lived in Denver, Colorado. That was 63 years ago. I have rather fond memories of that family. I think they moved from Salt Lake to Denver and were in the Denver first Ward. The members of the family that were my age were Kay and his brothers Don and Dale, who I think were twins, and their sister Carlie. They were all close to my age. The only one of the family than I had seen since we left Denver in 1949 was Carlie. She married J. Paul Jensen who also was in the same ward in Denver. Paul and Carlie moved to Lander while I was on my mission to Germany. When my father was released as the branch president in Lander, Paul succeeded him in that position.

Paul was a veterinarian and worked for one of the veterinarians there in Lander. Carlie had her first baby in Lander. On my way back home from my mission we stopped in Lander before going on to Salt Lake to report and then I took the Volkswagen bus that I had purchased for Ralph Lowe to Ogden and dropped it off. We were only in Lander for a short time. Carlie was insistent that we get dates for the high school dance. There were three of us traveling together and so she arranged dates for all three of us to go to the high school dance.

I decided to go to the viewing and see if I could see any of those people that I knew 63 years prior. Alice said, ‘Wasn't your great-great grandfather Rawlins buried in the cemetery in Murray?’ I thought he was buried in Draper, but I went to my database and found that Joseph Sharp Rawlins was buried in the Murray Cemetery along with his wife Mary Ellen Frost Rawlins. We decided it would be a good thing to see if we could find a gravestone for Joseph Sharp Rawlins since the church where the viewing was being held was on the same street just further down south. I felt it a good opportunity since I had never been to that cemetery before.

I did find and speak to the family members assembled. I did not stay for the funeral, but went straight to the cemetery. I inquired at the office as to the location of the gravesite. The lady there took me about 75 feet from the office and there was a large marker. I had previously looked on “Find A Grave” to see if they had a photograph of the grave marker. There was no photograph there. I now have a photograph which will I will try to upload onto the “Find A Grave” website. I include the photograph here as well.

The Caroline Gee McGavin Question

The other day I wrote up a case for the support group at Family Search.

Undocumented Spouse
Caroline Rowe Gee KWCV-H3F is show as having two spouses.
The male Frances Gates Person identifier: KWCV-H3F does not exist. He is not listed in the Utah 1860, 1870, 1880, 1800 or 1910 census in Utah. He is not listed in the Tooele Cemetery records. His death is not listed in the Eastern Idaho Death Index and only one Francis Gates is listed in the Idaho Death Index, but the birth date was 10 Feb 1870, He would have been 14 years of age at the alleged marriage.

The history of Caroline Rowe Gee found at https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxseXNhbmRlcmdlZXdlYnNpdGV8Z3g6NjIzMzQyOWE4MmMzYzZjMQ

does not mention him as a spouse. His death date is not entered into the data and his birth date is only approximated. He does not have any parents listed. There are no possible duplicates listed. The marriage date is listed as 1884. At that time she was married to Robert McGavin and was not residing in Tooele, Utah.

She was married to Robert when she was 13 years of age and had her fourth child Roland in April 1883 in Tocqueville, Utah and her fifth child Emma in July 1885 in Basin, Idaho and I do not believe she was married to someone else during the interim.

When I receive instructions from you I will separate out Frances Gates from Caroline's record, because I believe that Frances does not exist.

Ivin Laurence Gee

They responded as follows:

3/28/12
3:50 AM:
Dear Ivin Gee,

Thank you for contacting FamilySearch regarding Caroline Rowe Gee with two husbands.

Her husband Robert McGavin also had two wives at the same time. Caroline Rowe Gee and Rozelia Gee. Was this a polygamous marriage?

Francis Gates obviously did exist as several people have entered him in new FamilySearch and attached him to Caroline. He is just in the wrong place. As he has been sealed to Caroline we need some more information from you.

We presume that you are a relative of Caroline but we need to confirm this.

With this information we should be able to help you.
Thank you
Sincerely,
FamilySearch

My Response was as follows:

Caroline Rowe McGavin was the second wife of Robert McGavin. His first wife was Rozelia Gee the half sister of Caroline by Lysander's second wife Theresa Bowley . They were both in a polygamous marriage.

Frances Gates as a male does not exist. There are 8 combined records for this male Frances Gates. Someone entered this in error that did not know the family. Caroline's mother Maryette Rowe was married first to Hirum/Hyrum Gates and had two daughters by that marriage. Their names were; Francis Gates Born 15 February 1847 in Council Bluffs and Elizabeth Gates born 18 Jan 1849 in Salt Lake City.

Shortly after the birth of Elizabeth, probably in the fall, Hirum Gates absconded with Emily Amanda Rockwell, Porter's daughter, and went to California to the gold fields. Hirum also left his second wife, Sarah Maria Sayles in Salt Lake City. Hirum's first wife Poly Mayo died before he married Maryette. Because Lysander Gee lived on the lot in Salt Lake City next to Hirum Gates, he took Maryette Rowe Gates as his third wife and they were sealed by Brigham Young at Lysander's home five months after the civil marriage in February of 1850.

Frances and Elizabeth were farmed out to others to raise and that is how Frances ended up in Southern Utah.

Frances Gates was Caroline Rowe Gee McGavin's half sister as they have the same mother although they were sixteen years apart. In the record of Frances Gates we find the following:

Frances Gates Person identifier: KWNW-FCK Born 1847 in Council Bluffs, Pottawattamie, Iowa, Death 20 may 1925 in Kanosh, Millard, Utah

Has the following name variations in NFS

Frances Gates

Francis Gates

Frances Andrew

Frances Andrews

Frances Gates or Andres

Frances Wiley

Frances A. Andrews

Francis Andrews Gates

Sarah Frances Andrews

There are 90 combined record for this female Frances.

Hirum lived in California a short time before he died leaving Emily Amanda Rockwell Gates a very wealthy woman. She was too young to claim the inheritance without a guardian. She married again and eventually died and is buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery.

It is my assumption that someone saw the name Frances associated with her half-sister and assumed that Frances was a male and proposed that they were husband and wife and entered the record as such, and guessed at the marriage date and birth date.

I am the great grandson of Erastus Rowe Gee, Caroline Gee McGavin's older brother.

Caroline Gee McGavin Revisited

Here is a link to a history of Caroline Gee McGavin.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxseXNhbmRlcmdlZXdlYnNpdGV8Z3g6NjIzMzQyOWE4MmMzYzZjMQ


Here is a link to a photo of Caroline.

https://6452645681271931028-a-1802744773732722657-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/lysandergeewebsite/photos-of-lysander-and-family/Carolyn%2BRoe%2BGee.jpg?attachauth=ANoY7covMbKeTAcs1QrCNwBqp6GhzeJt0SSfAPK8NmbniQZljvRq-2a4x65oVVLedLb918Q0HQz_tKk-Bz57KYmBWBzfvNMpyyOyOeC39HOSE_4JA2yodxil4zKX6f73VLICjwAcK2aFDAWGVEBwU2OOvDJsAR1qQ7Vq_UU6fgMinGCsvyK4P2GITUP73-76d_8E8DF0Oy8Z1TF27z6eL2ZKCDM4hdEXNJbF0JEifMFYgZdY5zSWfnkt8zJPud4xgpSv5LnO6szq&attredirects=0

Histories of Amanda Sagers Gee

I have been trying to clear up the information on New Family Search. My great-grandfather's sister Caroline Gee McGavin has a second husband listed by the name of Frances Gates. This is surely an error. In order to prove this I needed a history of Caroline Gee so I sent out an e-mail using SahringTime.com. I later found her history on my computer. As a result of the e-mail I got a response from a descendant of Orlando Lysander Gee the son of Lysander Gee and Amanda Melvina Sagers. It was not about Caroline, but about Amanda.

This is the information. I edited it and sent it back to her. This is the edited copy:

From Helen Wilden

Amanda Melvina Sagers, the youngest child of John Sagers and Amy Sweet, was born 5 May 1821 in Hanover, NY. When she was 12 years old, she was living in Elk Creek, Erie, Pennsylvania where she was baptized 28 Mar 1833. The family moved to Kirtland for two years--Amanda going with her mother, Amy, who was divorced from her father and had married second, Ira Clothier. When her sister, Mariah Sagers Fisk, moved to Missouri in 1835, Amanda was probably in the same wagon train with the rest of the family. They moved to Far West in 1838 where Amanda met and married Lysander Gee on 5 Sep 1838. He was born in 1818 to Salmon Gee and Sarah Watson Crane in Ashtubula, Ohio. His father, Salmon Gee was born in 1792 in Lyme, New London, CT. to Zopher Gee and Esther. Zopher was born in 1763, in New London, CT.

Less than two months after her marriage, Governor Boggs issued the exterminating order, which ordered the Mormons to leave Missouri or be killed. Amanda and Lysander went to Quincy, Adams, IL where their first child was born on 12 Dec 1839. They are in the Bear Creek branch at Hancock IL on 1 Dec 1840. Amanda and Lysander had 3 children: Orlander[1] Lysander Gee b. 1839; Mary Gee b. 1840[2]; and Rozelia Gee b. 1848. Little Mary died in 1850[3]. Amanda received her endowments and was sealed to Lysander on 4 Feb 1846. The Gees went to St. Louis, MO where Amanda died. Amanda either died in childbirth[4] with Rozelia or soon after her birth as her death is recorded as 22 Oct 1848.

The Journal History reports that on 4 Jul 1849, Lysander Gee, wife, Theresa, and son, Orlando and daughter, Rosilia [Rozelia], left the Missouri River in George A. Smith's Fourth Company for the west. They arrived in the Valley Oct 27, 1849. They remained in Salt Lake about six years. In 1855, moved to Tooele. Lysander Gee is on the 1860 Census in Tooele City, Tooele, UT with 12 year old Rozelia; his second wife, Thersa [Theresa Bowley Gee] and their 10 children. Lysander apparently stayed close to the Sagers family through the years

---

[1] Orlando. It may have been pronounced Orlander, but later documents have the spelling Orlando. Orlando named a son Orlando Lafayette.

[2] I have no documentary evidence that there was a child by the name of Mary. She is not listed with Lysander, Orlando, Theresa, and Theresa and Lysander’s child Rozelia in the George A. Smith Company that crossed the plains.

[3] If Mary died in 1850 and was indeed the daughter of Amanda, then she must have stayed and come with the Sagers to the Salt Lake valley. She was not listed in the 1850 Utah census living with Lysander and Theresa and Lysander’s third wife Maryette Rowe. It is my presumption that the inclusion of Mary in the family of Lysander and Amanda comes from an interpretation of the 1850 Utah census. Here is a link to my interpretation of the census: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxseXNhbmRlcmdlZXdlYnNpdGV8Z3g6MmUwYTliNTJkNWJjNzA4OA&pli=1

[4] Amanda may have died in childbirth, but not with Rozelia, because Rozelia was the first child and first daughter of Lysander’s second wife Theresa.

I then looked into my records and found the following history which parallels the one above.

The following comes from Sarah Gee Barton a descendant of Amanda Melvina Sagers.

Amanda Melvina Sagers 1821-1848

Amanda, the youngest child of John and Amy Sweet Sagers, was born in Hanover, New York. May 5, 1821. Nothing is known of her youth. We do know that when 12 years of age she was living in Elk Creek, Eric County, Pennsylvania. March 28, 1833, she was baptized by Evan M. Greene and John B. Boynton. See Journal History for that date. She followed her mother to Kirtland where she remained at least two years.

We do know that her sister. Mariah Sagers Fisk, moved to Missouri in August 1835, so we can easily believe that Amy Clothier and Amanda were in the same wagon train.

After the death of Mariah in September. 1835, we believe Amanda accompanied the Clothiers to Far West. We know Amanda lived in Far West till 1838 for that is where she met and married Lysander Gee. September 5, 1838.

Fifty-two days later. Governor Boggs issued his famous exterminating order, which gave the Gees and all Saints the choice between banishment and death. This was not a pleasant prospect for the newlyweds. Amanda and Lysander met the challenge by moving to Quincy, Adams County, Illinois. In Quincy their first and only child was born, Orlando Lysander Gee, December 12,1839.

After the arrival of Orlando we do not know how long the Gees remained in Quincy. We do know that Lysander was ordained an Elder April 6. 1840 by William Smith. The General conference of the Church was held at that day in Nauvoo so the author believes the ordination took place in Nauvoo.

Lysander served as a Missionary in Iowa in 1844. In 1845, he was made a member of the 31st Quorum of Seventies. Lysander was born in Austinburg, Ohio, September 1, 1818, the son of Salmon and Sarah Watson Crane Gee. His pedigree, with 56 known ancestors, shows he came from the same progenitors that Joseph Smith did. His father, Salmon, was a member of the First Seven Presidents of Seventies from April 6, 1837, to March 6, 1838.

The author believes the Gees moved to Nauvoo before the April Conference of 1840. The Nauvoo Temple records show that Amanda was endowed the same day she was sealed to Lysander (February 4, 1846). Lysander had previously been endowed (January 6, 1846). Lysander believed in polygamy, as proof the Nauvoo Temple records show he married Theresa Rowley February 12, 1846.

It is very probable that the Gees accompanied Harrison Sagers to St. Louis in May 1846. The report of Joseph A. Stratton also states that another member was living in polygamy. That other member was Lysander Gee. Lysander did not remain long in polygamy, however, for on October 22, 1848, Amanda died.

How long the Gees remained in St. Louis after her passing is unknown. The Journal History solves this problem. That reliable authority reports (July 4, 1849), that Lysander Gee, wife Theresa, son Orlando, and daughter Rosilia, left the Missouri River in George A. Smith's Fourth Company for the west. They arrived in the Valley October 27, 1849. A nephew of Amanda was in this same Company, John Sagers Eaton.

Lysander and family remained in Salt Lake City about six years. Meanwhile. February 10, 1850, Lysander went into polygamy again. He married Marzella Rowe. About 1855, the family moved to Tooele, there Lysander spent the rest of his life. In the August election of 1878, Lysander was elected the first Prosecuting Attorney of Tooele County.

Lysander died June 27, 1894 - exactly 50 years after the Prophet's death. At the time of his death, Lysander was the father of 11 children, the grandfather of 16. His son Orlando, married Mary E. Bates. In 1888, Orlando moved to Oakley, Idaho, where he spent the rest of his life.

The following are my comments;

The Author of this history is not cited. There are a few inaccurate statements.

Lysander’s second wife was Theresa Bowley not Rowley.

Lysander’s daughter by Theresa was Rozelia according to the papers of Lysander Gee.

Lysander’s third wife was Maryette Rowe Gates Gee not Marzella.