Betheny Tomseth: 0:01

One of them split off and then Omer and his friend were together and they kind of went up a hill because they saw some deer up a hill. So they're kind of climbing this hill and my grandfather's in front and he turns back to his friend behind him and says you know, I've got a deer in my sight. So the friend stays back a bit, he sees my grandfather go over the hill and then he hears a gunshot.

Crista Cowan: 0:25

Stories that Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present and future. I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist. I've spent my whole life discovering the power of family history and I know that sharing the stories that live in you can change everything. Who doesn't love cake? I mean, I love cake and cemeteries. I know it seems like an odd pairing, but my guest today has lots to say about both.

Crista Cowan: 1:00

Before I introduce her, I've been thinking a lot about being the oldest child in a family and what that means, and my guest today is one of 14 children, and her oldest sister is actually a genealogy colleague of mine. I have known her for years and we have kind of been in the same industry events, and so when Betheny came to my attention, who is my guest today, I was curious to know how she became interested in family history. When it's her oldest sister who's the family genealogist? Because there's almost always one in every family, but to have two in a family is really unique, and so as Betheny shares her story, you'll kind of see the evolution of how she became involved in family history as well. Now, what does that have to do with cakes and cemeteries? Well, Bethany is known on Instagram as Bethany Cakes. Her name's spelled a little different B-E-T-H-E-N-Y. Betheny Cakes we'll put it in the show notes.

Crista Cowan: 2:17

Betheny Cakes we'll put it in the show notes. She first came onto my radar a few years ago at the RootsTech Genealogy Conference, where the cake boss did a judging of different family history themed cakes, and Betheny entered her a cake barn on their property where she teaches cake decorating classes, and she has a really lovely tie-in to cake and family history. She'll share a little bit about her obsession with cakes, as well as her equal obsession with cemeteries. We'll nerd out about that a little bit. Please enjoy my conversation with Betheny Thompson. Well, Bethany, I'm so excited to have this conversation with you. You have a fascinating story and I know pieces of it, but I'm excited to hear how you tell it. Why don't we start? Tell us about your family of origin, because you come from a pretty large family.

Betheny Tomseth: 2:59

I do come from a large family and it's funny because we come from California, so we were quite the oddity in California. But I come from a family of 14 children and so it's it's really fascinating and I think maybe that is kind of my fascination with family history, right when you, when you belong to something that special, and it just kind of really makes you think deeply about where you came from and who else you came from, maybe because they're just a really special group and where are you in?

Crista Cowan: 3:30

order. I'm like the ultimate middle child, number eight. Okay, and is there like how old's the oldest, how old's the youngest?

Betheny Tomseth: 3:34

So there's like a 21 year gap. Okay, yeah.

Crista Cowan: 3:37

Wow, so that's so lots of different like probably experiences.

Betheny Tomseth: 3:41

Yeah, lots of different generations really in the same family. Yeah, probably experiences.

Crista Cowan: 3:44

Yeah, lots of different generations really in the same family, yeah.

Betheny Tomseth: 3:50

So as you were growing up, was family history a part of your family, family stories? What did that look like? Yes, absolutely. I think what really kind of fascinated me the most was the family stories that my great aunt Edith would tell me. I didn't have any grandparents growing up that were around, but I had a great aunt Edithith and I feel really really lucky to have had my great aunt Edith and she was the half sister to my grandmother that passed away in childbirth to my father. But we did know her because my great aunt Edith loved her so much and it was a really really amazing love that you really could feel through her stories of her sister. She just adored her sister and we got to know her that way.

Crista Cowan: 4:26

Yeah, was Edith older or younger than your grandma?

Betheny Tomseth: 4:29

She was younger, okay.

Crista Cowan: 4:30

So she knew her from the time she was born, yeah, and had those stories. I love that. That's amazing, and what a gift that she was willing to share those stories with you too, because not everybody like I think. A lot of times when death or tragedy hits a family, everybody reacts differently and sometimes people shut down or don't want to talk about it or want to keep it in the past because they don't want to face those emotions. So the fact that she was willing to share those stories is such a gift.

Betheny Tomseth: 4:53

Yeah, that's so special. I love that you said that and she did it so well too and with so much love, and I think that really integrated in our family too and helped us to love each other and realize that we are so connected.

Crista Cowan: 5:05

Yeah, when you have her modeling that example of love for a sibling, which is really what that was. I'm also kind of a substitute grandparent, so tell us your grandparent situation growing up was a little different than most.

Betheny Tomseth: 5:16

Yeah, so I've got three grandparents that are kind of perpetually in their twenties, right, they all died really young. So my grandmother's name is Mary and her father's name is Omer and he had just moved up to Idaho, um, for the summer and then in the fall in October he went on a hunting trip with his friends. One of them dropped him off and then did his mail route and then two of them were with him, one of them split off and then Omer and his friend were together and they kind of went up a hill because they saw some deer up a hill. So they're kind of climbing this hill and my grandfather's in front and he turns back to his friend behind him and says you know, I've got a deer in my sight.

Betheny Tomseth: 5:58

So the friend stays back a bit, he sees my grandfather go over the hill and then he hears a gunshot and in the account, in the newspaper account, it says that he didn't hear a second gunshot. So he went to investigate, which I don't know in hunting if there's supposed to be a second gunshot or not, but that's why he went to go investigate. It says, upon finding my grandfather on the floor, my grandfather said the word, I fell water and the friend tried to administer first aid, realized okay, well, he probably needs water, and so when he goes to find water, by the time he comes back he's gone and that's the account. But it's a really interesting account because in the newspaper there's something that kind of caught my eye and caught some of my cousin's eyes as well, and it never really settled in the family. So growing up I didn't know this whole story.

Crista Cowan: 6:55

Did you know any of?

Betheny Tomseth: 6:56

this story I did. It was kind of like family lore. It's like, okay, he, you know a hunter, thought he was a deer, or he tripped and fell on his gun, or there are different accounts.

Crista Cowan: 7:07

And was it Edith? Because this is Edith's mother's first husband, right? Yes, so it wasn't her father, no, but she had grown up with the story, and so she's the one who passed it on.

Betheny Tomseth: 7:19

I don't think I heard it from Edith specifically. I probably heard it from my father or one of my siblings, but it was talked about. And then, as I got older and as I got more into family history, I really really wanted to know a little bit more about how this happened, because nobody really knew what it was and he was so young, so it's kind of, you know, intriguing. And so I was at RootsTech actually and the, the way I really kind of dived into this was, you know, the the find my relative on family search. So I'm on that. And then I get a message well, I see a name, um, who's someone that was attending online and the name was Jerry Waddups, and I was like, oh okay, well, that's interesting. And it said he was my first cousin, like once removed, so it was a pretty recent relative, and I'm like I wonder if he knows something.

Betheny Tomseth: 8:10

And so I sent him a message. I'm like this is my great-grandfather. Do you know? Does your family know anything about him? And then he sent a message pretty quickly back and said yes, I do know about Elmer. Um, that story never settled right and I don't think I told him the story in the message. So he immediately was like that story never settled right with me. And then he said but my father loved his brother and I'm like that's phrased really oddly and so I got a hold of Jerry, my cousin, and Jerry is actually my great-grandfather's nephew, straight nephew, so it's a pretty close relationship. So Jerry's dad and your great-grandfather's nephew, straight nephew, wow.

Crista Cowan: 8:45

So it's a pretty close relationship. So Jerry's dad and your great-grandfather were brothers.

Betheny Tomseth: 8:47

That's right. Wow, he never knew him. Obviously he was so young when he passed. But his father did know him and he would tell him stories about Ulmer and how sad it was that he had passed. And he just kind of told him the story of you know, they went hunting and he passed and and I I met up with him because he actually works at a family history center. He was close by and so I met up with him and it was really really neat meeting another one of us and um, I said, did your dad think that anything was odd or fishy? And he said no, um, he's like, but I read the police inquest and it didn't settle with me and I'm like I've been trying to find this police inquest, do you know?

Betheny Tomseth: 9:23

And he's like, no, I had seen it online somewhere and I cannot for the life of me find it. So what I did was I called the county recorder's office in Idaho where he, where they where incident happened, and person that handles the records, um, she says I explained the whole situation and she's like no, we don't have records that date back to 1921. She goes, but there is a old newspaper that's been around from the 1800s in the area and they, I bet you they have an article and and then she goes and then call me back. She was very invested, she wanted another us to the story and so I did call the newspaper article and within 10 minutes I had the newspaper article on my phone.

Betheny Tomseth: 10:09

It was fascinating, and reading the article really kind of made it more intriguing, because what the article said and so I can read a little bit, I would love that. And so I can read a little bit of what you want it said. At the inquest held Tuesday morning it developed that Waddups evidently slipped and fell and in doing so the gun was thrown behind him. When it was discharged the bullet entered the back of the right shoulder and came up through the chest. So that really really intrigued me and made this whole story even more interesting. And we were trying to like reenact how a weapon would fly and it's a rifle, right.

Crista Cowan: 10:49

It's a hunting rifle, yeah.

Betheny Tomseth: 10:54

Yeah, it's a long weapon. We were trying to figure out how it could flip behind somebody and then discharge this way like cause it's going upward this way and um. We could not figure it out. And also he had just gotten back from world war one. He was a soldier and so he knew his weaponry he knew how to handle it good yeah, and so it's just interesting, yeah, and nobody really knows, and so it's, I think, going to be a mystery forever oh, wow, and this story.

Crista Cowan: 11:20

Again, you're raised with this story, kind of knowing pieces of it, but you finally reached a point where you were like I want to know more and went diving into it and the newspaper is really what kind of brought the full picture and Jerry and his stories. Yeah, I love that. So your grandmother? How old was she when her father died?

Betheny Tomseth: 11:38

She was nine months old.

Crista Cowan: 11:39

And is she his only child?

Betheny Tomseth: 11:41

She was his only child. Wow, yeah, okay.

Crista Cowan: 11:43

And so then your great-grandmother remarries and has how many more kids?

Betheny Tomseth: 11:47

One more so, even my great-aunt Edith. Yeah, that's it, yeah, she. I mean, I just took my daughter to my grandma Mary's grave and I just it's. You go back there and you just realize how hard she had it, this great-grandmother artist. And it's when you go to the cemetery I'm imagining artists standing at that cemetery and her daughter's grave, and then, 11 months later, her son-in-law is right next to her and so it's so artists last lost like four family members.

Crista Cowan: 12:22

She lost her first husband, then she loses her daughter and her husband and, like that's a lot of death, she goes through the World War I.

Betheny Tomseth: 12:30

She goes through the Great Depression. And then her daughter dies and then she goes through World War II. It's tragic, that's a lot.

Crista Cowan: 12:43

I mean throughout that she was known for being a very loving and kind woman. Yeah, so so her daughter, mary um, did she die in childbirth with your dad? She did, wow. And how many children did she have? Just one, so that's two generations of single children.

Betheny Tomseth: 12:57

Two generations single children very, very young. Yeah, but really really beautiful thing is that Mary had my father. My father went on to have 14 children. Yeah, right, and I think that is really amazing, yeah, it is.

Crista Cowan: 13:13

That's incredible. So after you found that article, was there more? Did you find more of the story at any point?

Betheny Tomseth: 13:20

No, I didn't find any more of the story, but I did wonder some more because I realized that his grave is in Ogden, utah, and he his whole family's from Bountiful. As I'm doing more research, as I'm learning more about him, because that's what I really wanted was to get to know him. You know, because we're not how we die, right I really wanted to get to know who he was, and so that's why I started contacting family members and things like that. And one of the things that really intrigued me was that after he died because he had just moved up to Idaho the summer before, but after he died, um Artis, his wife, brought him back to Ogden, utah his whole family's from Bountiful, and so that made me wonder why is he buried here? Why did she just, if she was already bringing his body to utah, why not go a couple more miles to bountiful um, where the rest of his family is?

Betheny Tomseth: 14:08

And so, on a whim, one day it was actually his birthday, um, I'm like I'm gonna go. I've never visited his um headstone and so I'm gonna take a little road trip and go up to ogden and it is a beautiful cemetery. I have never been there and it was gorgeous and really big, there's like streets within the cemetery. And so I found his headstone and, you know, just had a little moment there and then I went home. And then, a little shortly after I went home, I realized, oh my goodness, my ancestor that immigrated from Scotland is also buried in that same cemetery.

Crista Cowan: 14:42

Same side of the family.

Betheny Tomseth: 14:44

On Artis' side, okay, and so that. And I didn't really kind of make that connection just yet until I actually physically went up there, and I think this is why it's so important to go to the cemetery. I love cemeteries. I think people think I'm weird when I say that, but I think they're just so full of stories and people and it's fascinating to me.

Betheny Tomseth: 15:05

So my sister is having a birthday party, so one of my sisters is flying in and she's like well, what are we going to do when we go? When I go up there, she is so fun and she always wants to have a good time, she hates sitting around. And I'm like, melissa, I'm not a fun person, I am a homebody and I love staying here. I don't know what to do, and so she's like, okay, well, think of something. And then call me back. And I'm like, okay, okay. And so I call her back and I'm like, melissa, I've got it, I know what we're going to do, and I'm really excited. She's like, okay, what I? I said I'm gonna take you to a cemetery. And she's like okay, a little pause. Okay, sure. And so, um, she comes and we get in the car. I'm like, hey, we're going for a road trip and as we're driving, I'm telling her all these stories and she is just listening and listening and she stops me at one point, probably halfway through, and she just looks, listening and listening, and she stops me at one point, probably halfway through, and she just looks at me. She goes how do you know all of this? And I'm like, well, I have this habit of just going down rabbit holes and reading articles and, you know, going through that memories tab and just you know anything that anybody posts on there. It's just fascinating for me to just really understand what their lives were like and how they lived. And, and of course, my, my sister as well. My sister is Rebecca Whitman Cofford and she is a lecturer at RootsTech and she's a certified genealogist and she has a lot of titles in genealogy. She's amazing, but she's told me a lot of stories as well, so I knew a lot of those stories from her as well.

Betheny Tomseth: 16:43

And so we're going up to the cemetery and I said, okay, this is our immigrant ancestor from Scotland and he's buried up there, so we're going to get to see him. We're also going to get to see Omer and we're going to get to see, you know. And actually that was all I knew. And so we're driving up there and this was really neat to experience with my sister.

Betheny Tomseth: 17:01

So we get to the cemetery, I take her straight to Omer's headstone and then we're looking. There's an online plat map. So we're looking through that for the name William Nicole Fife and I'm named after William Nicole Fife. Nicole is a surname of his mother and so Nicole is my middle name. And so we're walking through and as we're walking towards his grave there's Fife, fife, fife, fife, fife. They're everywhere, they're all over that cemetery and it was really surprising to me that there were so many Fifes in the cemetery. I never knew.

Betheny Tomseth: 17:31

And as we're walking we come up to a really beautiful stone bench and on the back of the stone bench is engraved Fife, really big and it's beautiful. So we walk around to the front of the stone bench is engraved Fife, really big and it's beautiful. So we walk around to the front of the bench and this was a man who had died in 1980 and I immediately recognized this engraving of a Scottish thistle. I knew exactly what it was and it just really hit me and that that Scottish heritage from the late 1800s was passed down from generation to generation, so strongly in fact, that they engraved a Scottish thistle on their headstone and I'm named after that ancestor, my brother's named after that ancestor, and it was really an amazing look at that family dynamic. You know, they loved their ancestry, they loved each other enough to all meet there before they move on, and it was really, really fascinating to me.

Betheny Tomseth: 18:29

So again we're looking at the plot map. After we find William, nicole Fife, and we see another name that I really did not expect to see, and the name was Cynthia Fife. Cynthia was William's third wife and I had no idea that she was buried up there, but I knew the name and so she was buried right next to Omer. So I think what happened was Artis brought her husband to lay next to her beloved grandmother, because Artis was 11 when her grandmother died and I thought that was a really neat family dynamic. So she just brought him back to her family, to her family.

Crista Cowan: 19:06

Yeah, and in that place I love cemeteries too. They are like part park, part meditation garden part, and the stories like every tombstone tells a story, the placement of the tombstone tells a story, the placement of the tombstones tells a story, and so the fact that you caught that and made those connections, I think is just beautiful.

Betheny Tomseth: 19:29

It's like a beautiful reunion there. It really is. Yeah, it is.

Crista Cowan: 19:33

Absolutely. Did Melissa get on board with it?

Betheny Tomseth: 19:35

finally, oh, absolutely.

Crista Cowan: 19:37

It's funny.

Betheny Tomseth: 19:37

My other sister calls me. I have seven sisters so I'm talking to my other sister on the phone and she says Bethany, melissa said you took her to a cemetery. I'm like, yeah, I did. And then she says and she told me that that is the most fun she's ever had at a cemetery in her life. And I said, yes, that's what I was going for.

Crista Cowan: 19:57

You did your job. Yes, well, I love that, so you have these grandparents on your dad's side.

Betheny Tomseth: 20:15

So Mary and Omer and Artis were her parents. And then did Mary's husband also die young, or was that the one grandparent that you knew had passed? They say he died of a broken heart. It was rheumatic heart disease. But I think after she died he kind of worked himself. You know too much and he was already from his grief. I think so. I think so, and I think he was already kind of of ill health. But after she died he just kind of worked and worked to kind of, yeah, like you said, kind of probably run away from it.

Betheny Tomseth: 20:44

And I think I have heard a story of my great-grandmother artist, telling him John, if you don't, you know, slow down and rest, your son's not going to have a parent. And he says he'll be okay. And he was. So who raised your father? Artist did yeah, can you imagine?

Betheny Tomseth: 21:04

But, um, going back to the cemetery, the reason I knew that name was because of my sister, rebecca, the pro genealogist one. It was christmas one christmas she um, sent me a present and she's like I'm sending you an early present, you need to call me when you get it. And I'm like, okay, she goes. I said, well, tell me what it is, because I was so excited I love presents. And she's like well, I will tell you that it's very, very old. I'm like, okay, great, I love old. So I get the package and I tell you she did not prepare me properly, because I get the package and I open it up and I immediately just dissolve into tears. It was that special.

Betheny Tomseth: 21:56

What I saw was a framed, handwritten original recipe, and the reason that it was so special was because it was for lemon cake and I make cakes you do. I teach people how to make cakes and cakes are very, very special to me. They're just such a great anchoring point for family gatherings and celebrations and connection, and so when I saw cake on that recipe, I just lost it. And then I learned she was my third great-grandmother and of course my genealogist sister wrote a whole story on the back of it, so I know exactly who she is and her story. And of course I went down the rabbit hole for her and her husband as well, and her husband was William Nicole Fife, the Scottish ancestor, and so it was a really, really special recipe.

Crista Cowan: 22:43

That's amazing, and you brought it.

Betheny Tomseth: 22:46

I did bring it. I want to see, okay, okay, there it is. Look at this Beautifully preserved.

Crista Cowan: 22:53

Oh my goodness. In original handwriting.

Betheny Tomseth: 22:55

Original handwriting.

Crista Cowan: 22:56

With like, even scratch outs and all sorts of things and remind me who this is. This is Cynthia. Feist Cynthia. So this is Artis' mother. Artis' grandmother. Artis' grandmother.

Betheny Tomseth: 23:07

Who she buried her husband next to. Okay, yes, and yeah, I like that. You said the scratch-outs, the scratch-outs and notes. This one says so there's lemon cake and then there's cookies. I says cookies, good, they're good cookies, I love it.

Betheny Tomseth: 23:20

And this was really amazing to see because it also kind of let me into her life a little bit, like it brought me back into that time period. Like I make cakes, how did she make cakes and why would she make cakes? Like obviously, I think cake back then was also a source of gathering and connection then was also a source of gathering and connection. I would suspect that this would be served at tea time or like special occasions, like they did birthday cakes for birthdays back then, and so it was really really special. Just imagining her making it and making it in those big ovens that they really have. Let know these ovens and they have to know their equipment, they have to know their baking tins, they have to. And I mean this recipe says um, separate the whites and you beat the whites. I'm like she had to beat those by hand.

Crista Cowan: 24:10

Oh, yeah, no, electric mixer for her. Yeah, so tell me how Rebecca like. How did Rebecca find this so?

Betheny Tomseth: 24:17

this was in a book, and this book was like from a pharmacy or a poppy carry, and then she was able to like fill in recipes because it says right there home recipes, and you know. And so she. I don't know how she came in possession of this book, but what she did was she separated some of the pages of the really amazing recipes and she sent them out to all of my sisters and they're just so, so special.

Crista Cowan: 24:44

There was something written on the back. There is. I need to read this. Handwritten recipes by Cynthia Abbott Fife in an original published volume of the Household Encyclopedia and Practical Home Physician a manual of useful information on all subjects relating to etiquette, cookery, domestic economy, family medicine and hygiene. That's the longest book title ever by Mrs Beaton and AL James. Book in poor condition, without cover, stamped and inscribed Cynthia Fife Compliments of Browning Grocery Cash Store in Ogden, utah. Held in 2013 by Mrs Fife's fourth great-granddaughter, rebecca Whitman Koford. She's a professional.

Betheny Tomseth: 25:26

And I looked up that address, I looked up the name of that and it's no longer there.

Crista Cowan: 25:31

Oh, of the grocery store, yes, where she got it from. Obviously, I love that she got this. And then she just wrote in the pages, and this recipe was on page 440. Look at that, so like that was a big book.

Betheny Tomseth: 25:45

Yeah, how fast after you opened this package and cried and talked to Rebecca did you bake the cake Immediately? And so it. It turns out, and I love tasting it because it kind of brings me back to what I would think that time period would be like. It's a really dense crumble texture, like a pound cake kind of um, not super sweet even though it has like three cups of sugar in it, but it's not super sweet. It's like lemon scented. It's just really, really beautiful.

Betheny Tomseth: 26:11

That's amazing and, and you have made it beautifully I mean, yeah, and this is probably the form that it probably would have taken in, just like a tin like this, a round tin like this. Another form could have been bundt pans too. So I've made it in a bundt pan and it's just so fun to kind of walk in her shoes or be in her kitchen.

Crista Cowan: 26:31

Well, I love that you have this recipe and I love that you that cakes are such an important part of your life. Like what does that mean to you?

Betheny Tomseth: 26:38

So my sister would make cakes and it was really, really special. But I just remember a very poignant memory when I was in my teens I was probably 16 or 17. And I'm just in the middle of all my teenage angst, right. I'm thinking, oh, nobody loves me. You're in a really big family, so you kind of feel lost a bit sometimes, right, but when it was our birthday, I just remember specifically sitting down at the table and then all my family comes around the table and they clap and they sing and they cheer just for you and for someone that's a middle of 14 children. That really makes you feel loved and special and connected, right, and I love that cake does that for people, and I love the look on people's faces when I hand them a cake and it's just, it's such a beautiful thing, I think.

Crista Cowan: 27:29

Yeah.

Betheny Tomseth: 27:30

I love that.

Crista Cowan: 27:31

Well, you've been on this amazing family history journey. I'm sure there are more to come, but as you think about kind of the future, what is it that you hope for the future?

Betheny Tomseth: 27:41

I really hope that people make family history now right. I hope that they make those connections and I hope that they make those memories now, whether they're gathered around food or not. You know, I think leaving a legacy of love and connection is the best gift you can give your posterity.

Crista Cowan: 28:02

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for sharing your ancestors, thank you for sharing your cake. I appreciate your time.

Betheny Tomseth: 28:10

Thank you so much for having me Studio sponsored by Ancestry.