Hiram Dayton & what I learned at RootsTech 2020

By Kurt Johnson

 

Hiram Dayton is my great-great-great grandfather, through my grandmother on my mother’s ancestral line. Until a few weeks ago, I knew the name Hiram Dayton, but not much about him. With all the information that is available, that’s a shame. Hiram Dayton was the first in the family to own a silver dagger and sheath, presented to him by Joseph Smith, for whom he was a personal protector for a time. The dagger, it was promised, would provide protection to Hiram and anyone who possesses it.

The story is told of Hiram’s son, Lysander, who wore the dagger under his clothes during dangerous times in Missouri. He was, at times miraculously, protected when mobs attacked. William Preston Dayton had the dagger in his home in Idaho when a fire burned all of his gold and silver, but the dagger was undamaged. And so it goes.

I learned a lot of things while at RootsTech 2020 in Salt Lake City the last week of February, some of which will certainly impact the way we interact with customers who contact us at Rememberize. As it turned out, RootsTech was one of the final times such a big gathering would descend upon the Salt Palace for a while as the COVID-19 pandemic took center stage soon thereafter. Here are a few of the things I picked up at RootsTech:

1) First and foremost, there are a lot of people interested in personal and family history. The conference was filled with people from all over the world, and from all age groups and religious backgrounds. People want to know about their roots.

2) Emmitt Smith has an amazing story. The NFL Hall-of-Famer and former Dallas Cowboy running back was the keynote speaker for Saturday’s session. You might be asking—what does a football player have to do with family history? Well, Emmitt’s roots were traced and shared on a TV show (“Who Do You Think You Are”) in 2010. His ancestors came to the United States aboard a slave ship, and from that knowledge, he gained a better understanding of his personal drive.

3) Most of us first heard of Leigh Ann Tuohy when we saw the movie, “The Blind Side” about NFL offensive lineman Michael Oher. The Tuohy family came upon Oher and took him into their family, eventually watching him succeed as a football player. Leigh Ann was the featured speaker earlier in the week at RootsTech, and she shared her story. Her message was largely this: “Families don’t have to match and you don’t have to just love people who look like you.”

From our perspective, here at Rememberize, we talked to a lot of people in our booth, all of whom have some level of interest in sharing the stories of their lives. Our goal, as always, is to encourage and, when needed, help people tell those stories. So many people have a hard time getting started with the process of writing their personal history, and so many others get bogged down and lose the drive to finish something they already started.

That brings me back to where I started this blog. I spoke to a few professional genealogists at our RootsTech booth who had interest in turning their clients’ family histories into books like those we produce for personal histories. To date, we have focused so much on the telling of stories of people’s lives, and less on helping people share the things they have found about ancestors a few generations back. Which takes me to Hiram Dayton.

After the conference, we talked about what we might be able to do to help genealogists produce these reader-friendly books for their clients who are involved in family history research, so I started digging into my own genealogy. Surprise! My uncle has done so much work in this area, and the dagger story was right there, as an attachment on Family Search with so many other documents and historical records. That may have turned out to be my greatest takeaway from RootsTech this year.

There are so many ways to tell stories about our own lives and about the lives of our ancestors, and I still love this work. Amazing discoveries come when we research and write our histories. If you are looking for something to do with your extra time at home, we have a few suggestions. A good place to start is with writing the stories of your life. We can also help you turn your ancestral records into captivating volumes. Need a little help or a even a gentle push? Visit our website (rememberize.com) or give us a call (385-257-1945) at Rememberize, and set up an appointment for a free consultation. We want to help you tell your stories.