Three questions for you, or for any other descendant reading these posts.

1. In 1854 Cyrus H. Wheelock wrote a letter to George A. Smith and mentioned that he kept a diary during the Nauvoo period. If by chance it survived the trek west, does some descendant still own it? If it does still exist, with its account of Joseph Smith’s death, it would be a great benefit to the Church and to Cyrus’s memory if it (or a copy) could be donated to the Church History Library.

(The Church History Library is a fairly new building on the block northeast of Temple Square and east of the Conference Center, not to be confused with the Family History Library. The Church History Library can preserve important artifacts like pioneer and missionary diaries and letters, and make them available to both descendants and historians.)

2. Anyone know where the Carvalho portrait of Mary Ann Broomhead Wheelock is? It was in the possession of the Broomhead family in Idaho at the start of the 20th century.

3. I am continuing to gather sources on Cyrus Wheelock and plan to write more about him in the future. He was an amazing and fascinating character, and deserves recognition for the important part he played in early church history.

If any information held by the family (letters, diaries, etc.) contradicts any information in any of these posts, I would very much appreciate seeing the sources, since vague assertions of inaccuracy are not helpful to me or the Wheelock family. Any other additional information would also be much appreciated, including family pictures. Please contact me with additional information at amyancestorfiles at gmail dot com.

I didn’t learn much about their experience, but I did discover an intriguing lead into the largely untold story of Cyrus Wheelock, a name that just barely sounded familiar.

Many of us know the story of Dan Jones in Carthage jail, that Joseph Smith told him he would live to serve a mission in Wales. Some people call this Joseph Smith’s last prophecy. But do we know that during that evening or the next morning, Joseph also told Cyrus Wheelock that if he went on a mission, he would be successful? That was counsel or a prophecy that Cyrus took to heart, and later in his life a source noted that while he was on his three missions in England, he oversaw the baptism of 7,000 converts.

Understanding the lives of some of the “minor” figures in Church History can give us some additional understanding of the events of the Restoration.

Thank you, Amy.