I had certainly intended to find out as much as I could about the history and culture of 19th century Wales, but I had not intended for my search of the Welsh identity to lead me down a path in and out of England and strewn with kings, queens, sorcerers, dragons, fairies, epic battles, and sackings. Now I think I know how Alice found herself in Wonderland.
Growing up in Wales means being raised in a culture steeped in Myth and Legend, Most specifically tales of King Arthur and the immortal Red Dragon, protector of Wales.
Mary Davis certainly would have heard the tales from parents, playmates and family members in her Welsh community, and probably further along the road to Plain City, Utah Territory from other British travelers and settlers she would have met along the way.
While debate among historians continues as to whether or not an historical Arthur exists, there is much agreement that evidentiary artifacts and documents point to possible candidates for such a person, including the one I see as the leading contender: King Arthrwys ap Mor of the Pennines.
I personally have seen enough to make up my mind; there is a real King Arthur, or more likely, several characters in history who contributed to Arthur’s exploits, whether Arthur-like individuals, or figures playing significant roles in his stories.
I include in my cousins database, a page devoted to the Arthurian Dynasty, centered around the King Arthrwys ap Mor of the Pennines. This is not meant to be a definitive answer for millennia of debate, but a staging point for Welsh researchers and/or Arthurian enthusiasts.
While this particular ancestral page is already filled with links and speculations along with stories and literal possibilities, I have no intention of coming to any kind of definitive conclusion. I already have far more information than I need for The Second Wife’s Story, so I will continue to add to King Arthwys’ page as I go but I won’t be adding much more than I already have.
It has been a great journey, but it’s time for me to get back to Mary’s story. I hope that Historians, Arthurians, and knights of the Round Table will find much to add to their repertoire of evidence. If you find any more than you already have, please leave me a comment. I would seriously love to see more inroads leading to definitive answers.
I really don’t know if I’ve added anything new, but it’s all new to me, but I still have to know! I’m looking for the bottle that says “drink” me; it’s time for me to get back to The Second Wife’s Story.
I took so long trying to force myself to finish a post about my first day in Austria 2019, that I couldn’t focus on finishing my organization of Mary Davis’s family in Wales. And I must admit that I had an ongoing battle between King Arthur, King Henry VII, King Einion, and a handful of other Welsh kings that The Second Wife’s Story was getting lost. To be honest, I just could not find enough interest in the Cymry until my epiphany in June of last year. I needed to find those kings to make a connection to the family that Mary Davis, the Second Wife, came from.
But now I can’t stop myself going down the British rabbit hole, so at midnight last night, I decided to divide my hyperactive focus into landing pages, so I could publish it and come back to it later if I needed to. That way I can get Mary out of Wales and into her adventure across the ocean.
If you are a Davis family descendant, a fan of King Arthur, interested in the Tudor Dynasty, or just a fan of British history like I thought I was but really wasn’t until I learned the truth about the Brits, then you’ll find some fun in digging into stuff about King Arthur, King Henry VII, King Einion, and other medieval kings. Beginning with King Arthwys ap Mar. I’d love to get your input to see if you can see what I’m seeing, or you can tell me I’m just seeing things.
You will be notified every time a new page or an update is added to my quickly growing database, including my Wednesday focus on The Second Wife’s Story coming on Wednesdays in the near future. You should see King Arthwys ap Mar/Mor’s page by Monday, and hopefully my bridge to chapter one on Wednesday! Thanks for reading/ See you then!
There is a sign hanging in my mother’s laundry room. It says, “On this site in 1897 nothing happened.” But who knows if that’s actually true? Who’s to say nothing happened on that site. Right there. You know, on that very spot right next to the washing machine? If there’s no evidence of schoolchildren following a path to an old schoolhouse just down the road, a young woman milking cows, an old farmer stooping to clear a clogged ditch, or a native woman searching for firewood to warm her hearth, I’m betting that there were a whole lot of somethings going on not too far away, and every time I see that silly sign, I wonder exactly what those somethings were.
Of course, I might be exaggerating a little, but the first log cabin was built in the area in 1877, so something could have happened there. Mom’s laundry room memorial makes me think. We post memorials for all sorts of historical events, things like battles, negotiations, inventions, catastrophes, births of historical figures, and of course, deaths (to name a few). Those memorials can tell us a lot. And although I could probably visit the local museum to find out if anything happened in the general vicinity of my mother’s dryer in 1897, I was inspired by Edgar Lee Masters’ somewhat irreverent and semi-fictional collection of poetic epitaphs to look in a graveyard.
I have always been drawn to cemeteries. In 1997 when Utah celebrated the 150th anniversary of the arrival the first wave of Mormon Pioneers, metal plaques emblazoned with the phrase, “Faith in every footstep,” began appearing on tombstones throughout the state. Those tombstones belonged to Utah pioneers who traveled by foot, horseback, wagon, or handcart, before the arrival of the transcontinental railroad in 1869. The year was 2001, and those markers were the first thing I thought of, so I headed for the first cemetery I could think of.
I was raised in Utah and I have absolutely no pioneer ancestors, but I still remember the stories of courage, struggle, heartache and triumph that accompanied the many families who crossed the American plains mostly by foot. It was an unfathomable journey taking about three months. I tried it a few years ago by car with my daughter and granddaughter from Kentucky to Utah. It took us four days. Of course, it was a round-trip ride, which meant a total of eight days in an air conditioned car. By the time we arrived back home, we discovered that we’d picked up stowaways in the form of bed bugs along the way. I am in no hurry to try that trip again any time soon.
By 2001 when my interest in graveyards had fully matured. The histories known, and the mysteries unknown, called to me like ghosts in a romantic novel. So when I stepped into the Cemetery in Plain City Utah, I was hoping those ghosts would lead me to a story.
And they did.
Inscriptions on tombstones are not usually put there to make you laugh (even though some do). They are there to make you think. The family memorial I found that day left me thinking for years. Along with the pioneer grave marker, names and dates are inscribed on all four sides of the tombstone. I could tell just by looking at birth dates that this was the grave site of pioneer settlers, but that’s not what got me thinking. It was the birth and death dates accompanying nine other names; all children. In the Fall of 1870, and into early winter of the next year, eight of those children died. Now I knew there had been an epidemic of some sort and I could see that there was a mystery begging to be solved.
I was in college on that initial visit, and a single mom at that. I didn’t have time to look for clues and answers, but that story stuck with me enough that I knew I had to write about it. I used an essay assignment from one of my English classes as an excuse to put my conjectures into writing. The essay won second place in a department contest at Weber State University, and I kept it over the years.
When I finished school and became an empty-nester, I finally started digging for the tombstone’s story. My first foray came up with some answers–enough to help me see that I could easily build a history around that grave marker. I went back to Plain City and took pictures of all four sides of the tombstone. What I found, shocked me. On the backside of the tombstone are the names of three of the children who died during the epidemic, and one more who was born and died in the following years. It wasn’t those children that surprised me, though. It was the inscription I had missed in my first visit at the bottom of the back side of the tombstone. It said, “Children of William and Mary Skeen.” I stepped back around to the front and looked at the bottom. It said, “Children of William and Caroline Skeen.” There were two different mothers and one father. This was a polygamous family.
If you zoom in, you can see Mary’s name at the bottom of the memorial. The names of her progeny, Elisha, Benjamin and Thomas, who died as children are above hers.
I grew up in Utah as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Most of the English speaking world knows us as Mormons. In recent years, active members of the church have cast off that misnomer, and choose the full mouthful of the title or simply use the acronym of LDS. Those who don’t know us well often conflate the term Mormon with polygamy. However, I am very familiar with polygamy. Many Utah pioneers practiced polygamy, and I had friends who were descendants of polygamous marriages. There were even a handful of families in my old neighborhood who still practice it even though it was disavowed by the LDS Church in the late 19th century. Current church members who enter into such unions are now quickly excommunicated.
Knowing what I know about Utah and polygamy, I won’t pass judgment on the pioneer families of the past, or discuss those who still practice it despite laws and church condemnation. But I am not blind to the fact that some sects have taken the practice much too far by forcing children into unwanted marriages. It’s because of that second marriage that I decided to focus on Mary Davis, the second wife of William Dolby Skeen. I have no plans to base Mary’s story on her polygamous marriage. I will build the narrative around polygamy at the point where it affects her personally, but Mary’s story is the story of her life and polygamy was a small part of it.
I’ve lived outside of Utah for most of the time since I started my research, but that hasn’t stopped me. The internet was in its infancy when I started the project, but now I have access to nearly everything I need to complete my research. It’s a wonder to me that I could build a compelling biography of an utter stranger without ever having met her or having any access to written memoirs.
I nearly missed Mary, tucked away as she was at the bottom of the backside of that monument. When I found her, I realized that her story is far more compelling than the location on the tombstone suggests. At a first glance, it’s easy to think nothing happened here. But from surrounding names, places, and dates, I could see that something had happened, and that little name tucked away at the bottom on the back side had been there and had played an integral role in the town’s history.
It’s not her death that’s important, it’s her life. I don’t want Mary Davis Skeen to be forgotten, and I feel compelled to commit her to the memory of others who would never have known her otherwise.
We are surrounded on a daily basis by people living what they feel are ordinary and unremarkable lives, but if we make an effort to get to know them, we can learn valuable lessons and come to see them as crucial members of our community. Mary’s tale unfolds in bits and pieces. Like a patchwork quilt, it is colorful, warm and inviting. Her story includes heartache, tragedy and tribulation along with faith, perseverance and promise. While Mary’s story reminds us that happily ever after never happens, it also tells us that happy endings do.
Please join me in my journey to tell Mary’s story. Your comments and helpful criticism are welcome and encouraged. Treat each post as rough drafts to Mary’s biography, as that is what they are intended to be. Mary’s story will be told one chapter at a time, and one month at a time, over the next year. My ultimate goal is to publish them together in a book. If you feel that you have information that may be helpful, or that will clarify ambiguities in Mary’s story, please leave a comment or contact me. And thank you in advance for your help!
A few months ago, I began researching and preparing to re-open Stories from The Past with a fully fleshed out version of The Second Wife’s Story written written as a series of posts to be prepared for publication by 2027. As I neared the end of 2025, and the holidays approached, I found it necessary to focus on home and family for a few weeks. . I had come to the end of my research topics and was already organizing the very large set of files into chapters and putting details into the timeline. I wasn’t worried, though, by November I only had to tie up a few loose ends and thought I could take my time doing it.
I planned my new year beginning with my Epiphany post and clarification. The Rebirth of Stories From the Past was set to begin on the Christian Holy Day of Epiphany because the connection between finding something important and the significance of the day were filed in my memory waiting to be fleshed out some January when I would explain the connection. Thanks to the 2025 “Super-flu” which extended into the new year, that post was only partially completed and not in the least well-explained when it automatically posted without my knowledge, a day late.
Oops.
To be fair, I was on my third week of battling the aforementioned flu and I still didn’t know I had it. I just thought I had overdone it, bringing on a vestibular migraine that that reused to go away and was steadily getting worse. On top of that, I thought I had caught a bad cold. In fact, on the very day my Epiphany post published, I was in the emergency room with a mindboggling set of symptoms. When you’re that sick, you don’t know to think of course I have the flu!
So the holidays came and went with their usual fanfare thanks to the fact that I’d prepared well, but The Second Wife’s Story and blogging were left untouched. By the time I knew I had the flu it was too late for all of that. I just figured I’d get caught up when I finally started feeling better and thinking straight.
That was yesterday; the day I found the accidental Epiphany post.
You might be wondering what Epiphany has to do with Mary Davis. I’ll have to say a whole lot and not much at all, depending on how you look at it.
As far as Mary’s story is concerned, my epiphany was just those two words: Industrial Revolution. It was the sudden realization that Mary’s life was inextricably and intimately linked to the beginning and end of the first of several industrial revolutions. My research following that first epiphany led me down the proverbial rabbit hole, but the continuing epiphanies coming out of that one revelation, led me to understand Mary better, and even more importantly, the human conditions leading the Skeen Family, and later the Davis family, down the Mormon Trail. Six months later I had my story from beginning to end.
The day of Epiphany showed up as the perfect day to revive Stories From the Past along with a lost tradition, so I focused on that day. Unfortunately my body had other ideas and the day came and went. But I’m back now and only a couple of weeks behind.
I guess I’ll have to flesh out a new Epiphany post next holiday season. I’m not even sure if it will post to this particular blog. (I have others.) I’ll be sure to link it to Stories From the Past for those who want to follow along.
As far as the Industrial Revolution and it’s accompanying epiphanies go, I’ll have that list along with my plans for Stories From the Past ready for preview next week.
Thanks for sticking with me. It’s good to be back!
StoriesFromthePast.com 