My guide for the hunting trip comes from a family who have been members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints for generations. They had Boook of Mormon names for dozens of places that we visited. One afternoon while we sat in the pines, Todd Black (the guide) told me a story about his grandfather Zeke Johnson and an experience he had. I finally found documentation of a letter that Todd's grandpa wrote to the Manti temple president in 1940. it is as follows:
"Well, I rented a piece of ground to plant corn on and it had been cleared but never plowed before. As I was plowing it I turned up remnants of old Indian buildings and I saw I was a-disturbing several burials. In about the middle of the patch the plowshare turns out a complete set of bones of a child ‘bout nine or ten years old. Them bones was in bad shape but they was all present.
“So I calls ‘whoa’ to the horses and turns ‘round and looks about two minutes at them bones. And right before my eyes they moved together and took on a fresh bone color. And then I seed the marrow and the sinews and muscles and joints and juices of the body all come together and the skin come and cover it. And so right there in the furrow I saw a-laying on its side the beautiful body of a young girl with black hair parted in the middle. And just as she stood up I saw a white dress come across her shoulders and she was so pretty that I got off the plow and reached to take her in my arms. And when I did that, by jove, she wasn’t there no more!
“I’ve decided it must be this way…That little girl had been put in a shallow grave ‘cause it was winter and the ground was frozen or else maybe they didn’t have no tools to dig in the hard ground with. Well, her grieving mother begins to think how she’d be eaten up by the first coyote that comes along. And just to set her poor broken heart to rest a man having the priesthood comes and tells her not to worry none about it ‘cause the first time that her sweet little body was disturbed in any way she would be resurrected. And I allowed nothing had ever touched that innocent little girl ‘til my plowshare came along and dug her up.”
The interesting part for me was the fact that " man having the priesthood comes and tells her not to worry none about it ‘cause the first time that her sweet little body was disturbed in any way she would be resurrected".
Now this is considered to be a legend and we may never know all of the facts. It is however, a very interesting story. I makes me wonder what what might be found someday on Julie and Kevin's property in Riverdale...
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