Muir Beaver Reunion

A couple of  Muir families left Scotland, came to America, headed west to be with the rest of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints members, and were called to Cedar City to work. After a while some of them headed north to Beaver, Utah, where they lived for a few generations before spreading out in northern Utah. Because of this, some of the descendants of James and Hannah Elizabeth Orton Muir met up for Beaver Pioneer Days and our reunion.


Can I just say, Dad's cousin Lesa is AMAZING! She organized everything, made arrangements and back-up arrangements, and researched pretty much every ancestor in the family. Thanks, Lesa. The photo scavenger hunt added an extra element of excitement and fun. 2nd place! Oh yeah!

Zak stayed home to work, since the reunion was mid-week, so my parents offered to drive the kiddos and me, as well as my brother, Aaron. My favorite part was going over the photos in the slideshow Lesa's family prepared, and hearing the older generations reminisce about their childhoods. When the date was in question, males and females showed how their brains worked. Women recalled ages of children, and men recalled ages of vehicles. I learned about Uncle Dennis accidentally catching Aunt Susan's dress on fire with a sparkler, and Dad melting part of Grandpa Calvin Hooper's soft car top with another sparkler. I loved seeing Grandpa Calvin Hooper's boyhood pictures with his mom in Beaver. We even got to drive by the house where he was born, along with several other relatives. The black rock and pink rock quarried nearby to use for local houses really gave that part of town an identity.

Mischief in Beaver

At Dad's Uncle Donald's house, I spoke with Grandpa's and Donald's other brother, LaRoy.

Grandpa Calvin M. Hooper in his youth

He said Calvin, my Grandpa, had been a talented track racer.  His best was the 500 m race.  He and LaRoy used to play around with the mine carts in Beaver.  Calvin would put his little brother in the cart and race it to the end, where the carts would dump their contents.  One time Calvin and one of his brothers played with a rope that caught fire, and dropped the burning end into an air shaft connected to the mines.  The boys ran away, and the miners evacuated, with no casualties.  People assumed someone had thrown a cigarette into the shaft, and their Mom, Jeanette, was appalled when she found out years later it was her boys' doing.

Abandoned mine in nearby murder-filled ghost town, Frisco, former murder capital

https://wiki.familysearch.org/en/Frisco,_Utah

Grandpa worked with tools all of his life.  LaRoy explained some of Calvin's ideas.  When Dad found out his father had tried to build a glider plane as a young man, to fly off of the dump, but was never successful, Dad proclaimed, "I'm glad he didn't, or I might not be here."

 I'd been confused about my great-grandpa's name, because on some records it says "Morise LeRoy" and others "Morise LaRoy."  LaRoy explained that his dad's name is Morise LeRoy, and when their son came along, Morise's wife wanted to name him LeRoy after his dad, but he hadn't told her about another son named Leroy in Washington state.  He didn't want to tell her, so he suggested LaRoy, since that's how they pronounce it.  I wonder if and when he told her about his other son.  She already had my grandpa, Calvin.

I used my basic Photoshop skills to work on Calvin's biological father's picture.  The other one I have still has a scratch across his face (accidental?), so Zak is going to help me fix it when we can get a good scan.

Calvin M. Hooper

John Marshall Sharp(e)