Happy Pioneer Day!

Remember the faith of your Greer/Nicoll pioneer ancestors:

Nathaniel Hunt Greer, Nancy Ann Terry Roberts Greer, Thomas Lacy Greer

Williams Washington Camp, Diannah Harriet Greer Camp, Catherine Ellen Camp

Peter Nicoll (his wife Margaret died before the Saints came West), Alexander Nicoll

Arza Matson Adams, Sabina Clark Adams, Sabina Ann Adams

Happy Canada Day!

Celebrate Orpha's Canadian heritage with a quintessentially Canadian dish called poutine. Different versions are found across the country, but they are all based on French fries and cheese curds topped with a brown gravy. While poutine is a relatively new dish, it is probably based on an earlier dish from England and Scotland called chips, cheese, and gravy.

Try the recipe from the Canadian food blog at http://www.seasonsandsuppers.ca/authentic-canadian-poutine-recipe.

Ten Things to Remember about Orpha

Orpha Elzetta Nicoll was born 149 years ago today. Here are ten things to remember about her:

  1. her parents helped settled American Fork, Utah, where she was born
  2. she was the seventh out of twelve children
  3. she moved to Arizona with her family in 1879 at the age of twelve
  4. she was married on her birthday (today is her 131st wedding anniversary!)
  5. she bore and raised fourteen children, who were all married before her death
  6. she was an excellent housekeeper and cook
  7. she loved music, especially Enrico Caruso
  8. she did all of the sewing for her children
  9. she was hospitable and a good neighbor to all
10. she was very fastidious and careful about her person

Click on the link with her name on the upper right of this page to learn more about Orpha.

A Family Quiz

Do you know which sibling is the answer to each question below?
(You can find the answers in their biographies that we posted from March 31-April 13, 2014.)

  1. Who established the A.V. Greer Memorial Library and ran the U.S. Post Office in Greer?
  2. Who was quite ahead of her time in owning a health food store and bakery in Los Angeles in the 1940's?
  3. Who wanted to have as many children as their parents did?
  4. Who had beautiful, curly red hair?
  5. Who worked as a maintenance welder on the Boulder Dam?
  6. Who served in the 143rd Infantry Regiment 36th Division of the U.S. Army during World War I and was on the front lines in France?
  7. Who ran a general store, cafe, gas station, and the U.S. Post Office in Red Hill, New Mexico?
  8. Who owned the St. John's water-powered electrical plant?
  9. Who worked as a plumber?
10. Who served an LDS mission to Australia with her husband?
11. Who could ride "like nobody's business" and became an excellent shot with a gun?
12. Who played the mandolin?
13. Who died as a result of being shot following an altercation with a neighbor?
14. Who spent much of his life employed by Apache County in the road maintenance department?
15. Who served in the U.S. Armed Forces in World War II?
16. Who ran a cafe at Peach Springs and later operated the Phantom Ranch in the bottom of the Grand Canyon?
17. Who was confined to a wheelchair later in life because of crippling arthritis?
18. Who was a school teacher in Concho and other Apache County schools for a number of years?
19. Who attended business school and modeled hosiery in San Francisco?
20. Who was a painter and house decorator by trade?

Kate's Family Returns to Greer

by Hydee Ballantyne Seever 

Hydee (center right) enjoying a walk
with her children, siblings, etc.

I only got to visit Greer once in my childhood. We had a magical time staying in some cabins on East Fork with our extended family. That memory of the green valley, cut through by sparkling streams and surrounded by pine-covered mountains, stayed with me, as did the stories my father and grandmother told me of their visits there from their own childhoods. I knew Greer was a place our family had roots, roots that stretched back generations behind me. Finally, I returned again for another family reunion, this time a 25 yr old college graduate, pregnant with my first baby. I have been returning with my own family ever since. On our visits, we rented various cabins around the valley, and even got attached to one across the 373 from the market. We dreamed of owning a piece of Greer ourselves one day so we could continue making memories there and pass the connection on to future generations.

We looked at cabins for sale over the years, but it was never right. We looked at other places closer to home or less expensive locations, but I was quietly stubborn that it was going to be Greer or nothing. Greer is connected to my family in a way no other location can be. When I walk it's trails or meander alongside the Little Colorado, I see my Grandmother, Margaret Stradling Ballantyne (Kate's daughter), through whom I inherited my Greer family ancestry. You can't buy that or replicate it. 

Hydee's dad Tom hiking with her
youngest daughter Emmie

Christmas 2014 we decided to rent a cabin in Greer so we could get away to a white Christmas with just our family. During that visit we renewed our search for a place to call our own and found one. Just one mile off the 260, on Hall Creek, we found the Phares family selling their cabin. From the moment we drove down the road, it felt right. By March, the property was ours. My dad, Tom Ballantyne, says he thinks we may now own what used 

cousins playing in
the Little Colorado River

to be part of the Crosby family ranch, as he remembers it.  I treasure the legacy not only of our family roots in Greer, but what the Phares family left for us on the property that was their family getaway for 40 years.

This past summer, 2015, we spent as much time as we could at our Greer Hydeaway (my name for the property). I love being there with my seven children. Life is indeed more beautiful and simpler there.

Hydee's husband Adam enjoying time
with some of their girls at the pond on their land

We enjoy the wildflowers that change weekly, the hummingbirds that swarm our feeders by the dozens, the afternoon rain showers each day. A couple of times a week, we drive down to the Little Colorado for a stroll and a dip in the chilly waters. We cook and eat outdoors a lot. My kids pick wild raspberries and make fresh pies. They wear overalls and cowboys boots for their romps around our place, or just go barefoot. Family and friends visit frequently, which makes everything sweeter. Our Hydeaway has given us a place to escape and focus on being together, with each other and with our roots, too.