Last summer, the UK received a visit from a film crew headed by Monte Bona, director of the Mormon Pioneer National Heritage Area in southern Utah. The MPNHA is one of some 40 areas designated by the US Congress as making a major contribution to the early expansion of the United States. You can find further information at: www.mormonpioneerheritage.org.
The MPHNA preserves historic buildings, and sets up interpretive centres in Utah, and most recently has been producing a series of TV documentaries – Discovery Road. Last Summer’s visit to the UK was to gather material for a documentary looking at families who emigrated to the US from the UK as members of the church, but who have distant cousins who still live here. Interviews were filmed in Yorkshire and in South Wales. In Huddersfield, one of the participants was Angela Dodd Graham, who is not a member of the Church, and who hadn’t realised she had relatives in Utah. In Merthyr Tydfil siblings Arline Jones, Arnold Jones and Freda Entwistle, together with their cousin Glen Mahoney, told the story of their ancestor Moses Jones who left for Zion in the 1860s, leaving behind a wife and six children. They were to follow once he sent money for their passage, but (for reasons that are not altogether clear) they never did join him, and he re-married in Utah. However some generations later, Moses Jones’ ancestors joined the church in Merthyr – among them Arline, Freda and Arnold’s mother, and her cousin, Glen’s great-uncle.
The filming produced so much good material, three programmes are to be produced and aired rather than one. The first - The Dreams I Left Behind – was scheduled to be shown on the Utah TV channel KUEN in June and covers the material filmed in Yorkshire. The second – Music is the Reason – links the small town of Wales, Utah (established because of the coal discovered in the area) with the Wales we know. It includes interviews with members of the Morriston RFC Male Voice Choir who rehearse in Seion Newydd chapel in Swansea, the Jones, Entwistle and Mahoney cousins in Merthyr Tydfil, Rosalind Hall (another descendant of Moses Jones and a Merthyr native who conducts the BYU male chorus), and Merrill Osmond, who has family and musical connections with South Wales.
Music is the Reason will be aired on Utah television stations later in the summer, but was shown in May at the Merthyr Tydfil stake Church History symposium – its world premiere!