Grandfather ALVIN FRANKLIN STEWART was born in the year 1819 in New York the sixth often children to Philetus and Susannah Ballard Stewart. When he was seventeen he decided to go west, first to his cousins in Ohio and then when he was 23 to Illinois. It was here, in Illinois, he found the Mormon Church and was baptized on March 20, 1842. Brigham Young ordained him an elder and a year later he was married by Heber C. Kimball to CAMERA OWEN in the Nauvoo temple. In his diary he relates how he stood guard over the prophet, Joseph Smith, while the prophet got some sleep just prior to being taken to Carthage. He was present at the memorable meeting at the Bowery when the mantle of Joseph fell upon Brigham Young. This experience left no doubt in his mind as to who should be the rightful leader of the Church.
Alvin and Camera made their home in Montrose, Iowa across from Nauvoo until they followed the Saints to Winter Quarters in 1846. Their first child died as a baby before they left. Our grandfather, OSCAR MARION was their second child and was born in Garden Grove, Iowa in Sept of 1846. I suppose they had to stay and work to get the necessary supplies to cross the plains because Joseph, the next child, was born in Missouri in 1849 and Fidelia in Council Bluffs in 1851. The family crossed the plains in 1852 in Captain Jolley's company with their three children. Oscar was six at the time. They settled first in Mountain View, Utah and then Springville where Mary was born. The last five children were born in Richmond where they were called to help settle Cache Valley. Grandmother Camera died shortly after the last child was born in 1867 at the age of 43. Grandfather at the time was away in New York explaining the gospel to his aged parents. His mother was dying of cancer and the new doctrine confused his parents and they refused to listen much to his disappointment. But while he was there he learned the names of his ancestors, and when the temple was completed in Logan he and his children did temple work for their deceased family. Alvin remarried a widow in 1868: Eliza Barnett Shepherd who had two children. She was very kind to the new family and was loved by them. By 1881 there were eight additional children. At this time Brigham Young again called them to settle a new territory we now call Mesa, Arizona. Alvin took many of his children plus his new wife and their children. His granddaughter, Ethel Russell Stewart, who wrote his story, says she remembers him as tall and slender with beautiful white hair and a beard. His hair was auburn in his younger life and his skin was pink like a baby's. He died in Mesa in 1905 nearly 87 years of age, faithful to the end.
Camera's parents were EPHRAIM OWEN AND MARY M. KERN . Ephraim was born in 1797 to a Quaker family who lived in Georgia. When he was a little boy, the family moved first to Ohio and then to Indiana. These places had just been opened to white settlers and our family helped to pioneer them by building roads and clearing land. Even though Ephraim grew up on the frontier he was well educated. In 1824 he married Mary Kerns whose family had moved from Kentucky to Indiana. They were of German descent and belonged to the Dunkards (German Baptists). One of Mary's brothers, however, became an evangelist preacher. Our grandmother, Camera, was the first child of five children, all of whom were born in Greene County, Indiana. It was here in Indiana that they met Mormon missionaries who might have been on their way to Missouri from Kirtland. We know that Ephraim was a member of the Church by late 1833 because he wrote a letter to the church newspaper in Kirtland hoping the branch in Greene County had not been forgotten since many of the members had already moved to Missouri. Ephraim and his family moved to Missouri shortly thereafter and suffered when church members were expelled from that state in 1839. Ephraim wrote a paper about the many wrongs the Saints had endured.
When Ephraim died that same year, 1839, his wife and young children in Montrose, Iowa were left to fend for themselves. We guess that at the age of 42 he suffered from malaria that caused so much death and sickness when the Saints first moved to Nauvoo. Mary didn't live much longer; she died in 1845 also in Montrose. One of the girls, Basella, also died in 1840 at the age of 13, and in 1844 Mary's baby granddaughter, the first child of Camera and Alvin also died. We learn from the 1850 Census of Montrose that only Camera's two younger brothers were left living there with another family. Camera had married and was in Council Bluffs, and her other sister had married and moved to Minnesota. Camera was the only one of the children who remained faithful and came west with the Saints. Her two brothers owned and operated steamboats on the Mississippi River when they got older.