[Granville-Hough] 30 May 2009 - The Play

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 05:34:38 -0700
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: The Play (15 May 2004) - 30 May 2009

	I cannot remember what the play was, or was about, or even who had it.
  That was only five years ago.

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    The play has a great essence of truth, though poetical.  The author
is to be commended, and I hope he will allow you to publish it.
     I have sent the information to Randy Huff on the material in
Houston.  Yes, members of this Huff family have been LDS church leaders from
the time they joined in Utah about 1860.  They pioneered in the UT
canyons, in ID potato country, and in Northern CA.  I was most pleased
to meet a descendant.  Some of the family members were lost in a
steamboat explosion in the Missouri River on the "Saluda."
     Somewhere back in time, at least in England, we were related.  Then
our respective families followed the same trails south into Georgia then
on to Mississippi.  Thomas Huff, the progenitor of that family, had
become a well-off cotton farmer when he and his family became interested
in the LDS faith.  They sold out in Mississippi, then went north by
steamboat to St Louis, then on up the Missouri.  After the steamboat
"Saluda" disaster, they finally made it to Omaha, then across to Utah.
They had
lost everything they had in the explosion, so they depended on the
church for a fresh start.  They worked hard and lived the faith and
gained their rewards, day by day.
     I believe it was the story writer Jack London who described his
family as being Jack Mormons, that is being Mormon when it is an
advantage to be so, then being anything but a Mormon in the next
situation if that gave an advantage.  The Huffs were never Jack Mormons.
     From what people tell me, many aspects of LDS community life are
quite like the community life in the isolated Baptist churches of my
youth.  The deacons served as judge and jury.  If a man mistreated his
wife, she told her church sisters, who in turn got word to the deacons.
The deacons  held a meeting and decided what to do.  If the man refused
to meet with them, they went as a group to his field and confronted
him.  As my father and maternal grandfather were both deacons, I learned
a lot about marital problems, family feuds, and other things I was not
supposed to hear.  Well, that was all long ago.  But some of it may
still be found in LDS communities.
     With my regards, Granville.

PS.  "We need at least to consider and examine forms of controlled
legalization of drugs," George Shultz, Former U. S. Secretary of State.