Merle Reid Clark's book Nels and Emma Just, A Historical Collection, is a perfect companion to other books about family history. It fills in details before, after, and in between the stories we already know.
Much of Clark's work comes from interviews with Fred and Doug Reid, Emma and Nels' grandsons. She poured over correspondence, diaries, and other writings by Emma Thompson Just and Agnes Just Reid. She interviewed other family members and researched online ancestry records. It's a look at the lives of Nels and Emma in a new and fresh way.
She takes us back to Denmark, where Nels (9) emigrated to the U.S. with his family in 1855, and the treacherous hand cart journey they made across the Plains. She tells of the estrangement of Peter and Karen Marie, Nels's parents, and we get to know them individually as they lived with the family from time to time.
You'll learn another side of Nels: the dancing and fun-loving Nels, the cattleman Nels, that "would rather walk the 9 miles to Shelley than ride a horse."
We also learn the story of Emma's ancestors, the outspoken and self-sacrificing Phoebe Hunter, Emma's grandmother, and the short and tragic life of Emma's mother Frances, who died at 48 upon arriving back in England after enduring a "failed" try at living in the New World.
Finally, Clark describes some of the family's important friends and neighbors, notable buildings and sites, relics, and heirlooms.
