Kemp Wilson Family Oral History Volume 1
My father Kemp Wilson was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer in 2007. We all knew the prognosis for this form of cancer was not good. Over the next year and a half I spent a great deal of time with my father and his family, celebrating our happiest moments and acknowledging the difficult times. It was a healing experience to have the opportunity to spend quality time laughing, crying, and just being together. On April 5, 2008 in the early morning, my Dad died. While devastating, I also felt relief that he was out of pain and moved on to his next life. The prior night I had dreamt we were together and I was telling him about struggles I was experiencing, his response was, "Meg, just laugh." And that was who my father was -- a supportive spirit who knew when to use humor to help people put things into perspective.
As a gift to my father and our family, his closest friends in Red Lodge, Montana, where he lived hired local audio biographer Mark Edwards to record my father’s memoirs. I feel blessed to have nine hours of recordings of his and our family’s history as told by my father, who was an engaging storyteller and historian. Some of the dates and names are slightly off, due to subsequent research that has been done since that I was able to find through records of the Latter-Day Saints for which the Wilson family had been early members, baptized by Joseph Smith's first cousin George Albert Smith.
Our family’s history as settler colonizers begins in 1643 on stolen land when my ancestor Benjamin Wilson arrived in Massachusetts as a 7-year-old orphan to serve the Bay colonists. In 1658 he became a freeman (no longer an indentured servant) and drew lots for “wood and commons” in Charlestown, Massachusetts, giving him land stolen from the indigenous Massachusett people. Charlestown was originally called Mishawum by the Massachusett. (since my father’s initial account of Benjamin Wilson, additional research through the Library of Congress has been done and recorded in the Mormon archives that indicates Benjamin to have arrived at 7 years of age in 1943 and unaccompanied.)
In this first volume Kemp primarily focuses on our family’s history with the Mormon Church based on genealogical research he had been doing, as well as family lore passed down. Some of the highlights include:
The Mormon migration west from Iowa to Utah; the Wilson’s were some of the first L.D.S. settlers in Ogden and the main street at the time was named Wilson Lane (it still exists).
Our family’s connection to the Mountain Meadows Massacre, resulting in my great grandfather four generations back, William Clinton Wilson being threatened by the Avenging Angels (the hit squad of the Mormon Church) and forced to leave Utah, subsequently settling in Idaho. And just as the Mormons denied the Mountain Meadows Massacre for decades; today the Church of Latter-Day Saints characterizes the Avenging Angels as based on rumors.
Our family’s history of living in abject poverty for many years, my great grandfather Jack and his brother Bill going on to become the number one bootleggers and moonshiners to the wealthiest families in Idaho, and later my great grandfather returning to abject poverty, living in a shack on the Snake River and eventually taking his own life when his children tried to put him in a nursing home.
Our family owning/operating the first movie theater in Idaho Falls, the Star Theater.
A recording made by my great grandfather Jack of him playing his banjo and singing Lonely Little Robin.
The murder of the Deputy Sheriff in Idaho Falls by my great grandfather Jack’s brother Bill, when the Sheriff showed up on their property to arrest the two of them for their bootleg operation. Bill only served five years in the penitentiary due to his team of three different law firms working for him … his customers.
You can read more about our Wilson family history from the Mormon Church’s records, can be found here, including a number of diary entries during our family’s migration to what became Salt Lake and Ogden:
https://www.meganwilson.com/stains-series.