Each winter I go down the rabbit hole of personal histories of individuals who lived in Grouse Creek. I generally start with pictures I have collected over the years that need to be included in a history.  A lot of times there are other individuals in the pictures that lived in Grouse Creek that I don’t have a personal history for. Because I have a picture of the individual, I feel it would be nice if they had a history to go with the picture. In this case, I go to a wonderful website called Family Search. This website has information submitted by people throughout the world. Sometimes there is already a personal history for the individual but other times there is just basic information and sometimes an obituary. From this information, I try my best to create a personal history and include it on this website. Because I don’t know who submitted the information to Family Search it is hard to give everyone credit.  The problem with the Family Search website, is that I find additional pictures of individuals and in those pictures there maybe others who don’t have a history.

So, you can see how easy it is to get lost in pictures and information. This is your classic “Bright Shiny Object” syndrome, and I get lost for hours. Recently I have added histories for Virginia Richins Empey, Melvin Oscar Paskett, Eliza Richins Blackburn, Hida Ruby Betteridge, Charles Chadwick, Alma Harry Toyn and Art Brothers. I also added numerous pictures to various histories I already had.

I have run across great pictures such as this one with some Richins, Toyns, and Cooks. However, I have a few unknown people that I am still trying to identify. If you know who they are, please let me know. It would be great to know what they were all doing together and what the special occasion was.

Back Row – Annie Richins, Unknown, Charles Toyn, Louisa Richins – Front Row – Unknown, Eliza Richins, Clara Cook (middle front), AF Richins, Unknown

During Utah’s State Centennial in 1996, Verl and Delma Kimber Smith started a project to collect and publish personal histories of individuals who lived in Grouse Creek. We have now collected over 500 histories and some of them were created from obituary information they had. I finally finished adding the pictures I collected to these histories. There are now 950 images that were added. I have a lot more images, but need personal histories to add them to. These histories are available at https://grousecreek.com/grouse-creek-personal-histories/ 

To access the histories, you can click on the Personal History menu and a list of Surnames are displayed at the bottom of the page. If you click on a Surname, you will see a list of the individual histories that can be accessed.