Margaret Mann Foutz

Lately, I’ve been getting the encouragement to learn more about my family history from several angles.  I taught a lesson on genealogy to my Sunday school class two weeks ago. The visiting teaching message this month was on family history work.  After our dress rehearsal for “The Messiah” a couple of weeks ago the bass soloist came up to me and said, “Hey we have the same last name!” Long story short- he’s a distant relative of Tom’s! He knew tons about the Foutz line and we exchanged contact info. We’re going to get together in January and go out and find the Jacob Foutz Farm that isn’t too far from where we live. He told us about all the work his family has done and that they maintain a website called Foutz.org.

Last night, I got on familysearch.org to look up family names in hopes of finding a great namesake for our son. (Iver, Peder, Soren, anyone?) I started looking around the site, in hopes of finding any documents or stories that had been attached to the files of my ancestors. I’ve long enjoyed learning about my fore bearers, but always preferred learning about their lives more than just looking for names and dates. After searching in vain I remembered David telling us about Foutz.org, so I decided to check it out. I spent the next several hours reading about several of Tom’s ancestors namely Conrad Foutz, Jacob Foutz and Margaret Mann Foutz, and their son Joseph Lehi Foutz. I was struck by their stalwart lies and devotion to what they believed. Jacob was one of the first bishops in Nauvoo, he and his wife Margaret were there at the time of the Hans Mill massacre, a horrible incident in the history of my church when mobs attacked a small village repeated times killing many of the men. Jacob was himself shot in the leg. He pulled dead bodies on top of himself and pretended to be dead on the mobs first visit. Several other times his wife dragged him to the woods and covered him with leaves, and once he had gained the ability to sit up, she dressed him in woman’s clothes and set him at the spinning wheel to save his life. This quote from Margaret’s journal amazed me:

This story also humored me:

“On one occasion when the mob came to Sister Foutz’ looking for her husband, she felt the power of God upon her to such an extent that she was totally unafraid. She commanded the mobbers, inasmuch as they had killed and injured the men of the community, to kill and dress a pig for her and her little ones to eat. These men trembled before this little woman and did as she had told them to do. Sister Foutz often told how she was surprised herself on such occasions, but she was humble and gave credit and thanks to her God for this extra courage and strength.”

Margaret and her husband traveled with the pioneers across the county to settle in Salt Lake for a short while. Shortly, after arriving Jacob died, the first saint to do so in the valley, and Margaret moved with her family to Pleasant Grove where they lived kitty corner to Parley Pratt’s wife. She continued to be a stalwart and important woman in the history of the church until she died at age 97.

I loved hearing these stories. Ever since I became pregnant I’ve felt a desire to learn about Tom’s ancestry. I want to pass on these stories to our son. This is his heritage.