[Granville-Hough] 20 May 2009 - 14 May 2004 - Chance Meeting with Randy Huff

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

In 2004:

     I met LDS official Randy Huff today at a luncheon focusing on
strenghtening the
family ties for Hispanic (and other) LDS families.  He descends from Thomas
Huff who left MS for UT between 1850 and 1860, if I remember correctly.
Thomas' descendants lived in UT and ID and CA and were prominent in LDS
activities.
     (The other Huff families who were early LDS members came from the
Tory descendants of the old Huff who lived to be age 123 in New York.  The
descendants went to Canada, then came back to the US, joined the LDS,
and moved also into UT.  The two families apparently lived in different
communities and were unrelated.  As you recall, the old guy in New York
was the living example for Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle, and had
been born in either Denmark or Norway.)
     Randy Huff has additional information on the Thomas Huff family.
Max, if you recall, the family was on the steamboat Saluda which blew up
in the Missouri River, killing or drowning numerous people.  I would
have that story in the Utah file or in the Missouri file.  I don't think
I ever had it in the MS file, but my memory is getting dim on where
things would be.
     Just a random recollection not for publication.  Thomas Huff had one
son or son-in-law killed in the Saluda explosion, and he had to advise
the widow to remarry the
first available convert.  She did just that in order to gain support for
her children.  There were then, I believe, six additional children born
from this most
unhappy union.  I eventually sent her comments about this somewhat
forced marriage to the LDS Library.  I think they were sent to me
because the family which had them did not understand the relationships
and circumstances and wanted to get rid of them.  I arranged the notes
chronologically but made no comments.  They are not pleasant reading.
None of the descendants who might run across them accidentaly would be
named Huff unless they married a cousin.
	I think the plural marriage situation was like slavery was to Abraham
Lincoln: "I suggest that anyone who extols the benefits of (slavery or
plural marriage) should have it tried on him."




PS. "Penalties for the possession of a drug should not be more damaging
to an individual than the use of the drug itself" Jimmy Carter, 
U.  S. President.