Between the Lines: Family History and Quirky Stories From Our Forgotten Past

    Canal boat, taken from a newspaper ad. This one was on the Erie Canal, but the Wabash and Erie Canal packet boats in Indiana were the same. Passengers could count on a slow but smooth ride. Once there were four Mahon brothers who settled in Huntington County, Indiana from New York: Samuel, Archibald, William and Monroe. Samuel was the oldest. In 1838 he was 30, and the youngest, Monroe, was 15.      He and his brothers had been “engaged in the boating interests” of the Erie Canal. (1) Samuel supposedly also owned a hotel in New York said to have 300 rooms, a highly unlikely claim. Seized with “Western fever,” he came to Indiana to see what prospects he had with the Wabash and Erie Canal. Once in Indiana, he “became infatuated” with the countryside and the opportunities it offered. He purchased a large tract that had been Myaamia - Miami Indian - land, said to be three miles long, on the banks of the Wabash River in Jackson Township, Huntington County. (2) He intended to be t

  Percy Amanda Pettibone (1787-1876)      One evening, Dan and Percy Amanda Goddard agreed to host her nephew at a missionary meeting in their home in Charleston, Illinois. Young Lorenzo Snow had been called on a mission for the recently-formed Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Days Saints, popularly known as the Mormons. He wanted to preach to them and whatever friends and neighbors they could gather. Lorenzo was nervous and unsure what he was going to say.       Decades later, Lorenzo would become the fifth president of the church. But of course, he didn’t start out that way.       “I was quite bashful then,” he later wrote. “It was a very difficult thing for me to get up there and preach to my kindred and the neighbors who were called in. I remember I prayed nearly all day preceding the night I was to speak.”       Lorenzo believed the Holy Spirit gave him the words he eventually spoke. They must have been powerful as Aunt Percy, Uncle Dan, their children and some of the neighbors we